


Breaking Point

by jotunemo



Series: Another little piece of my mind [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: A lot of f-words, Abuse, All of the good stuff really, Awesome Frigga (Marvel), Bullying, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Dissociation, Doesn't he always, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Everyone Needs A Hug, Frigga Needs a Hug (Marvel), Gen, Human AU, I could never be a Mom, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loki (Marvel) Angst, Loki (Marvel) Feels, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki Whump, Loki hurts, Loki is a mama's boy, Loss of Control, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Not all the time, Not for the faint of heart, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, POV Frigga, POV Loki (Marvel), POV Thor (later), Protective Frigga (Marvel), Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sorry Not Sorry, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Teenage Drama, The Author Regrets Nothing, Thor 2011 alternate universe, brodinsons gone wrong, high school is hell, maybe frigga isn't so awesome, parenting is a bitch, she loves her sons but sometimes love alone isn't enough, she's trying but odin isn't making it easy, tags will be added as the story progresses, teenage angst, teenage loki, there is a lot of swearing, they are all in pain, this author can't write happy loki, thor is definitely his father's son, thor is having anger issues, tw blood, tw cursing, tw graphic depictions of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:47:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 130,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24257650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jotunemo/pseuds/jotunemo
Summary: Fifteen-year-old Loki no longer feels like himself. He's angry all the time. He hates everything, mostly himself, because he's convinced there's something wrong with him. Frigga senses his pain but she can't reach him. Thor has moved out. Odin is emotionally unavailable. Loki doesn't have any friends. His teachers feel threatened by his intellect. And there's the bullies in school, the self-destructive voices in his head and a dark family secret waiting to be discovered.How much pain can a brittle psyche take? Read to find out.
Relationships: Frigga | Freyja & Loki & Thor (Marvel), Frigga | Freyja & Loki (Marvel), Loki & OCs, Loki & Odin (Marvel), Loki & Thor (Marvel), Odin & Thor (Marvel)
Series: Another little piece of my mind [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751101
Comments: 432
Kudos: 359





	1. Freak, freak, freak

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU that has been kicking around in my head for the longest time. I believe the first time I ever came up with the idea was in October 2018 or so. I've been meaning to write it for a long time but all I ever managed was the "No turning back" oneshot that I have published on here as well and that is set in sort of the same universe even though it doesn't truly belong in this story. I wrote the prologue and the first chapter because it just wanted to come out recently and I'll post them here now. This story is the first part of a series that emcompasses three parts so far (much of which is already planned and even written out in rough drafts), so I will continue to work on it.
> 
> I will also continue to work on "A tree without roots" (I have actually written something for this one today too) but since I am not really feeling this fic at the moment, it has to wait.

**_Friday, August 23 rd, 2019  
  
_**  
_**37 days to the incident** _

__

_How odd_ , thinks Loki as he crouches down to inspect the hole in front of him that’s crawling with snakes. _There are no snakes like this here_. He doesn’t know exactly where here is but that doesn’t matter because the part of his mind that’s still somewhat lucid is aware that he’s dreaming and dreams don’t follow the same logic that rules the waking world. Which is why he’s suddenly lying on his stomach, drawing closer to the snake pit. His presence seems to alarm the animals and who can blame them, really, he thinks, because humans suck, they suck a lot more than snakes because snakes can spit venom at people they don’t like and that’s a huge asset. They hiss at him, crawling over one another in panic when they spot him looming over the pit, and then they come for him, sneaking towards him. He knows he should be afraid but he isn’t because if they bite him, he’ll probably die and that wouldn’t be the worst thing. He creeps closer, leaning forward and then down into the hole. The snakes seem to grow larger when he approaches. Their eyes turn a gleaming crimson and their fangs grow too until they’re at least twenty inches long. Loki’s eyes widen in awe when he catches sight of the blood dripping from them. He leans deeper into the hole, _deeper, deeper, deeper_ , and he’s so mesmerized that he doesn’t realize the tapping on his shoulder. He pushes himself over the edge and slides into the pit on his stomach but before the first snake’s fangs can bite into his hand, someone grabs him up by the shoulders and yanks him up so violently that he hears the bones in his neck crunch.

The dreamscape blurs at the edges as his mind scrambles awake, _you fell asleep, you pathetic little twat, oh shit, no, please, NO_ , and then his eyes fly open, the livid glare of his philosophy teacher swimming into focus. The first thing Loki thinks is that he isn’t quite sure whose eyes are more terrifying but if someone pointed a gun to his head demanding an honest answer, he’d probably choose Mr. Stokes over the creepy vampire snakes.

Mr. Stokes glowers down at him, arms folded across his flannel-clad chest that makes him a walking stereotype. “Are we boring you, Mr. Odinson?”

 _Yikes_. Loki glances down at the text they are studying and tries to stifle the yawn that’s coming with little to moderate success. “To be perfectly frank,” he sighs. “Yes.” He clears his throat for good measure. “A little.”

“Freak,” hisses the bulky guy named Carson— _such a moronic name_ , _ugh_ —who sits next to him.

“Alright then,” Mr. Stokes announces in that awfully condescending voice that he always resorts to when he speaks to Loki because he knows damn well that Loki’s mind is quicker than his and it probably irks the shit out of him. “If you are _so_ bored out of your wits by my explanations, then why don’t you teach your classmates about the material?” A challenging smile creeps onto the man’s lips as he holds the whiteboard marker out to him.

Loki swallows. Not because he couldn’t possibly explain what Plato has been trying to illustrate with his allegory of the cave. Hell, he is sure he could deliver a far more entertaining interpretation of the ancient text than Mr. Stokes, if not for the tiny little detail that he’s been drinking before school and his father’s three-hundred dollar booze is now sloshing around in his empty stomach in mocking, nauseating waves.

Loki glances up at the clock, realizing to his dismay that it’s not even ten o’ clock in the fucking morning. _Another day, another fuckup_. He is quite used to those by now, so why not add one more to the list, right? He grabs the pen and rises from his chair. _Challenge accepted_. Thankfully, his legs are only a little wobbly and he decides that this is a good omen.

The class begins to giggle as he skulks towards the board and he hears another string of whispered expletives, none of them particularly original. It’s an accomplishment, really, he thinks not for the first time, to be so fucked up that you even stand out in a philosophy class full of nerdy High School rejects.

Loki glances at the whiteboard. Mr. Stokes has actually defined allegory in a scribble as if it’s some fancy term people have never heard of before. His eyes flit to his teacher, who is under the impression that he’s intelligent just because he can recite other scholars’ interpretations of all the very smart and very dead philosophers who apparently soaked up most of the intelligence available in the universe during their lives, leaving very little for modern times.

 _Insult him_ , growls the voice in his head he’s begun to refer to as just that—The Voice, in capitals—which makes him cringe every time he catches an ad for the eponymous casting show on TV because his voice sounds far worse than the worst candidate who comes to the show under the delusion that they can sing. It’s a growl, sort of a mix of Scar and Hannibal Lector but with a posh British accent, which is weird and also kinda creepy because the actor who plays Lector looks so much like his Dad.

 _I won’t_. _That’ll only get me into more trouble_ , Loki hisses inwardly. The Voice isn’t real, he knows that. It’s probably a part of his psyche that he suppressed if the whole id-ego-superego thing holds true, which he thinks is highly probable. It doesn’t matter. Whatever The Voice is, it is just inside his head.

Until it _suddenly_ comes out. Well, it doesn’t come out per se but Loki’s arm moves even though he can’t remember telling it to reach for the whiteboard cleaner thingy and wipe away what the teacher wrote. “Alright, let’s start with a less simplistic approach to the text, shall we?” Loki asks and his voice suddenly almost sounds like the The Voice.

 _Shit_.

 _This can’t be good_.

The eyes of Mr. Stokes, who leans against his desk to enjoy the show, narrow behind his glasses and Loki smirks at him before he turns towards the dumb bunch of lame ass teenagers sitting in front of him. He knows that most of them are only waiting for him to mess up so that they can later taunt him and shove him in the hallway, and call him all those unoriginal things like _freak_ , _nerd_ , _emo_ , _slut_ , _string bean_ or _fag_ as if he’s never heard any of those before. “Since our beloved teacher here has refreshed your knowledge of allegories, we should now ask ourselves which abstract or spiritual meaning is represented through the concrete form of the cave. Any ideas?”

The students snort their contempt.

“Well, I’m going to tell you,” Loki says as he draws the scenery onto the board, talking like The Voice, and feeling truly powerful for once because The Voice isn’t a weak pathetic little shit like he is and if he can become The Voice, his teachers and classmates can’t harm him anymore. “These people that are trapped here, poor souls,” he mock-sighs and taps on the figures he drew with the marker, “are confined to a very specific perception of the world, namely the shadows spilling into the cave from the outside. Since they sit in darkness, this is all they see and they believe that what they see is real; that these shadows are actual objects and not just shadows of objects. The prisoners grow up in a reality they believe to be the truth even though it’s not the truth because truth is a matter of perspective. The people inside the cave can only see those shadows and those outside can see the sun. Plato makes it sound as if that’s the higher truth that the ignorant people in the cave can’t see but there’s more to this. The things is,” he pauses, tapping the whiteboard marker against his chin, pretending to think very hard, “there is no truth. The notion of _truth_ is a bunch of bullshit.”

“Mr. Odinson, this is not what Plato—”

“Oh, pardon me, I didn’t know you knew him, sir,” Loki snarks. “Damn, you look really good for your age.”

The teacher’s cheeks redden with anger and his voice sounds like the creaking of thin ice shortly before it breaks. “Mr. Odinson—”

“What? We’re all prisoners. There’s no people outside the cave who know the truth. There is no one perception of reality, which means that there _is_ no reality. Everyone has their own perception and most people are too ignorant to ever understand that.” Loki looks at the other students who hate him so much and whom he probably hates even more. “You are those prisoners and this state, this town, this school here is the cave, chaining you to your own ignorance—”

“Mr. Odinson!!”

“—by perpetuating meritocratic, homophobic, ableist ideologies instead of encouraging you to think for yourselves and allowing you—”

“MR. ODINSON!!!” Mr. Stokes yells and takes a step towards him as if he’s going to try to shut him up with physical force if necessary. “That’s quite enough.”

“Someone can’t take criticism.” A giggle slips past Loki’s lips. _Whoops_. _Where did **that** come from? _

There’s a pause, a quite dramatic one. Mr. Stokes scrunches up his nose. “Do I smell alcohol on your breath?” he asks harshly and that question brings Loki back down to earth faster than the speed of lightning, instantly taking all the magic away. It’s like being hilariously shitfaced and then suddenly having to barf.

Loki laughs nervously. “Your sense of smell must be off, sir.”

Mr. Stokes flashes him a scornful grin that says ‘You’re busted’ better than those words ever could. “I think it is time that you and I had a chat with the principal.”

Loki’s shoulders slump.

The last thing he hears before he leaves the classroom is someone calling him a freak once more.

* * *

It takes his Mom almost an hour to arrive and Loki tries his very best not to doze off again under Principal Acker’s merciless eyes. The expression on Frigga’s face when she enters the office is inconsolable, truly inconsolable. It’s _so_ inconsolable that Loki thinks whoever coined the expression must have been thinking of her face in this very moment when he came up with it.

“Excuse me,” Frigga says to the principal before flicking a glance at him that is, wonder oh wonder, not of the oh-what-have-you-done-this-time variety. Instead, it articulates concern, maybe even pity, and Loki tries to burrow into the cushion of the seat he is sitting in. “I couldn’t come sooner. What is the matter?”

“Your son fell asleep in class and insulted both his teacher and his classmates under the influence of alcohol,” says the principal, eliciting a sigh from Frigga. “Consuming alcohol on school grounds is a violation of our code of conduct rules and—”

“I didn’t consume it on school grounds.” Loki shrugs. “There’s nothing in our code of conduct that says ‘It is prohibited to enter the building after you’ve had a few drinks for breakfast’.” Another giggle comes out. _Damn_.

Principal Acker’s eyes almost pop out of his head. “Mr. Odinson, you’re skating on thin ice here. You disrespected and insulted your teacher, calling him a homophobe.”

“Is that true, Loki?” Frigga asks and there’s so much disappointment in the sound of his name.

“If I remember correctly, I said he was perpetuating homophobic ideologies. That’s not quite the same as calling him a homophobe. You can perpetuate ideologies unwittingly because you’re ignorant. Which was exactly the point. If Mr. Stokes knew the material he’s—”

“Are you questioning the intelligence and the subject-specific expertise of your teacher?” The principal glowers at him.

Loki knows that things could still go somewhat smooth if he just said no. If he showed a little humility, maybe fabricated an apology. “What expertise?” he snarls instead. “He sent me to the board to show me up because he assumed I hadn’t been paying attention—”

“You were asleep,” Principal Acker reminds him.

“It’s not as if I haven’t read this allegory before,” Loki protests, to which the man raises both of his eyebrows.

“He used to read a lot,” Frigga confirms. _Used to_. Before he discovered that alcohol is far more useful in the escaping-your-own-thoughts department.

“And then he dismissed my interpretation just because it doesn’t suit his limited worldview,” Loki continues. “Wouldn’t a good philosophy teacher encourage critical thinking instead of trying to stifle it just because he finds someone’s intelligence threatening?”

“So what you’re saying is that you are more intelligent than your teacher? Is that it?”

“Well, obviously.” Nope, Loki doesn’t like it when things go smooth. Not since The Voice started talking to him.

“Alright then, if you think you’re _so_ smart, you’ll be taking advanced physics instead.” Principal Acker’s face scrunches up in a grin.

“Physics?” Loki straightens in his seat, his heart sinking to the bottom of the sea faster than an anchor iron.

“ _Advanced_ physics.” The principal turns to Frigga. “Mrs. Fjörgyndottir, your son is expelled from Mr. Stokes’ philosophy class and suspended from this school for ten days,” he decides and Loki can see the imaginary judge’s gavel he’s pounding onto his desk.

* * *

“That’s not fair,” Loki mutters under his breath as he follows his Mom to her car. “Every fucktard can figure out physics. They’re not gonna hate me any less in that class either. It’s probably gonna be even worse because figuring out _physics_ takes less than a third of the time it takes to figure out philosophy and why didn’t he just paint a target on my fucking back?”

“Stop cursing,” Frigga admonishes him.

“Is that all you’re gonna say?” Loki asks when that’s all that comes out of her mouth for a few steps down campus because this new brooding-in-silence type of method she’s been testing out to make him talk lately is quite unnerving.

“What do you want me to say?” Frigga asks back. “You get drunk before school, you insult—”

“I am not _drunk_ ,” Loki protests. “I have my wits together more than anyone else in this fucking building.” He clears his throat when her nostrils flutter. “In this building. And I didn’t insult him. I just stated facts.”

Frigga doesn’t say anything else until they’ve climbed into the car and she’s slammed her door shut. “Tell me what happened this morning, Loki,” she says softly, her benign blue eyes piercing into him. “What was so horrible that you decided to have alcohol for breakfast?”

There’s disappointment in her tone, yes, but mostly it’s sadness and, for fuck’s sake, pity. She’s _pitying_ him. Why can’t she just be angry? The Voice hates pity with a passion. “There’s nothing to tell,” Loki snaps even though a part of him longs to tell her about how much the bullying hurts and how alone he feels every time he enters that building full of students. How alone he feels _all the time_. He wishes he could tell her that and maybe she would give him a hug if he did, wrapping him up in her arms and stroking over his head like she did when he was little but _you don’t deserve a hug, you pathetic little fuckwad_ , no, no, keep it the hell together. “He hates me. He’s been looking for a reason to kick me out all along.”

“Then why did you give him one?” Frigga asks and the question comes as a complete surprise.

“To prove a point?” Loki asks back but that doesn’t sound quite right.

There is another long silence. Frigga starts the engine and pulls away of the curb. “You know, the more I think about it,” she begins softly, briefly searching for his gaze before her eyes travel back to the road, “the more I get the impression that you are alienating people on purpose just to prove to yourself that everyone is, as you say, hating you. You _want_ people to push you away, don’t you? I have no idea why but you used to do the very same thing to your brother. You angered him on purp—”

“Leave Thor out of this,” Loki replies in that soft growl that isn’t quite his voice and Frigga flinches from the sound, a sharp gasp escaping her mouth. Here’s another thing, or rather, another person that The Voice hates with a passion. His shithead big brother.

“I’m sorry,” Loki gulps when the anger is withering away again at the sight of Frigga’s sad eyes. The sadness in those eyes is killing him. “I am sorry, Mom.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Frigga says, after a while. “I’m not mad at you. I’m sad.” _No shit, Sherlock_. “Because you’re obviously in a lot of pain that you can’t express and it’s also quite heart-wrenching for a mother to realize that her son finds his life so unbearable that he feels the need to numb himself before he can even go to school.”

“There’s no need to go all shrink-y on me, Mom,” Loki snarls because, for some weird ass reason he doesn’t understand, he can no longer deal with people showing him compassion and it drives him crazy, oh yes, it does, it makes him want to reach into his head and tear out his mind and rip it to shreds with his bare hands. It makes him want to strangle himself and crush his own throat or claw out his own eyes or rip open his skin and yank it away from his bones because he just doesn’t _understand_ this Loki that has come to _hate_ _everything_ and is such a wretched little fuck-up next to his fucking college football star of a brother. He feels an all too familiar urge in his fingertips and his hands begin to tingle with anticipation.

They drive on in silence, that particular, very unnerving kind of silence in which you can almost feel the air molecules buzz with the tension that is building up between two people.

“If you don’t want to talk to me,” says Frigga when they almost reached their disgustingly wealthy suburban neighborhood, “perhaps we _should_ consider a therapist.”

There you go.

A therapist.

The fuck.

 _Well, of course she would suggest a therapist, wouldn’t she, because there’s clearly something **wrong** with you_ _and they’d better fix you, freak_. _Weirdo_. _Whacko_. _Freak_. _Screwball_. _Loon_. _Nutcase_. _Freak_.

 _Freak_. _Freak_. _Freak_. _Freak_. _Freak_. _FREAK_. _FREAK_. _FREAK_. _FREAK_. _FREAK_. _FREAK_. _FREAK_.

When Frigga slows the car to a stop at a red light, Loki removes his seatbelt, bolts out of the car and runs as fast as he can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review. It's so much harder to keep going without a quick feedback :)


	2. All that matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki tries to soothe himself and Frigga resorts to measures she never thought she'd resort to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please double-check the trigger warnings in the tags before reading.

The tingling in his hands is intensifying as Loki runs, his mind spiraling off into one thought cascade after another. _You fucking freak_. _You’ll be taking advanced physics_. _You are suspended from this school for ten days_. _Freak_. _Freak_. _Freak_. _Freak_. He wills the nerve-stretching chanting inside his head to stop but it doesn’t. It _never_ does. His inner voice doesn’t _ever_ shut up. Not The Voice this time, another one, or maybe several other ones but who can tell, _really_? At some point, he stopped trying to keep track of those annoying, foul-mouthed little bastards that clatter into his mind uninvited and tell him what a goddamn fuck-up he is because, well, the voices do have a fucking point. He _is_ a fuck-up that falls asleep drunk in school, _no, no, no, I was not **drunk** , I was just bored out of my fucking brain, why can’t anyone see the fucking difference_. He is a fuck-up that tries to prove himself in some weird ass way but ends up making a complete fool of himself instead, giving the whole class what they’ve been waiting for since the new school year began only five days ago.

 _Five days_.

 _You couldn’t even make it five days_.

 _You are alienating people on purpose_.

Oh, shut up. Be quiet. Just be _quiet_!

 _You’re skating on thin ice here_.

 _You **want** people to push you away_.

In his mind’s eye, Loki sees himself tiptoeing to the whiteboard as if someone else inhabited his body and his intestines clench. No, that’s not quite right, it’s not just his intestines, no, _everything_ clenches because his whole body is on fire, _itching_ , _vibrating_ , _trembling_ , and once more, he finds himself overwhelmed by the urge to shed his pathetic human shell. Here’s another reason why snakes are _so much_ cooler than humans, a random thought creeps up on him. Snakes can just shed their own fucking skin and he envies them for that ability, oh yes, he fucking _does_. He can’t even put into words how much he envies them for that because all he wants right now is to tear off his own skin and … Okay, he doesn’t _really_ know what he wants, not exactly. All he knows is that he is falling apart, yes, he’s _fucking falling apart_ , and isn’t that expression ridiculous, yes, it _fucking_ is, because there is no physical, embodied sensation corresponding to that disembodied cluster of words. People aren’t actually falling apart, are they, _no_ , of course they _aren’t_ , _you hopeless_ _nimrod_ , their physical selves do not collapse like a house of cards or a tower of building bricks but it damn well feels exactly like this anyway, just sort of _mentally_ , as if his _mind_ is falling apart. Yes, there are single bricks of his mind that are collapsing and even if he manages to catch one or two, the other bricks slip through his fingers and that’s the _worst_ feeling in the world but there’s one thing that will make the sensation go away.

Loki runs faster. _Faster_ , _faster_ , _faster._

* * *

“Loki,” Frigga gasps, shock coursing through her veins. A moment ago, her son was sitting in the passenger seat, ripped charcoal jeans disappearing into black high-tops with green laces propped up against the dashboard, arms folded across his loosely hanging black The Kinks shirt in defiance, and now he’s running away from the car like a scalded cat. She has suspected that mentioning a visit to a psychotherapist wouldn’t go down smoothly, which is exactly why she—irresponsible as it might have been—has put it off for as long as she has. Loki’s mental state is so volatile that sometimes, one wrong word is enough to plunge him into despair, which then leads to anger. She has prepared for this, _of course she has_ , _she has watched him spiral downwards a little more every day after all_ , but still she hasn’t expected him to—

She flinches at the sound of a horn behind her. It costs her a lot to tear her gaze away from her son and direct it towards the traffic light above her, which has turned green. She starts the car and crosses the intersection, flicking another side-glance towards the neighborhood but, by then, the suburban scenery has already swallowed up Loki’s running shape. She hits the gas, speeding to make it home before him.

Before Loki’s suspension from school, Frigga has been inclined to let him be, trying not to push him too hard. Trying to give him time to figure out whatever it is by himself while still showing him that she is there for him if he needs her to be. Foolishly trusting that he’d confide in her if she didn’t force him to open up about his struggles. But obviously, _very obviously_ , that is no longer going to be enough. Loki is in so much pain that her chest constricts every time she looks at him but he is trying to bottle it all up, figuratively _and_ literally, it seems. He won’t talk to her about it, which is understandable, she muses, because he is a teenager but he also doesn’t seem to be talking to anyone else. He has no social outlet whatsoever. From what she can tell, he no longer has any friends. He doesn’t meet people after school. He doesn’t go out at all. He is withdrawing deeper and deeper into himself, spending almost all his time alone in his room, shutting everyone out. He even refuses to eat dinner with her and Odin on most days now and if he does choose to join them, he only picks at his food. Frigga can’t tell whether it’s because he is depressed or because he is starving himself but in light of all the other self-destructive tendencies he is exhibiting lately, she fears it might be the latter. She also fears for the relationship between her husband and her youngest that has gone from bad to worse lately, which is mostly Odin’s fault because he is being way too hard on him. He constantly criticizes his son’s appearance, even in front of others, ridiculing his shoulder-length black hair, his dark clothes, the black eye-liner and nail polish he’s now wearing along with bracelets, necklaces and rings. Frigga has pleaded with Odin to stop but he is indignant about how Loki’s style of clothing is tarnishing the family reputation. Frigga isn’t crazy about that style either— _Is there any mother in this world who would be?_ —but, in contrast to Odin, she recognizes it as a cry for help. Loki tries to draw negative attention to himself almost all the time now. He wants Odin to resent him the same way he provoked his teacher into expelling him and his brother into getting so mad at him that Thor would throw things like “You’re the worst brother!” or “You’re such a fucking pain in the ass!” or even the occasional “I hate you!” into his face. Loki wants people to despise and reject him and if they do, he absorbs the rejection, soaking it all up, and then turns it into hatred and rage.

He’s brimful with it. He is filled with so much anger that she can sense he’s going to explode any moment now. He has turned into a powder keg with limbs, she thinks, yes, that metaphor is very accurate, he’s a walking powder keg that is stumbling through a labyrinth of fire, swaying far too close to the walls of flame with every step, always at the risk of toppling over or being pushed into the fire, always at the risk of detonating. He does explode all the time, tiny little explosions of rage, disdain and hatred here and there. For heaven’s sake, he is so, _so_ angry but beneath all his rage, he is a fifteen-year-old boy whose heart is aching. She knew this. She just didn’t _how much_ Loki’s heart was aching until Principal Acker called her earlier. Until she understood that her son couldn’t even go to school or live with his own thoughts anymore without numbing that beautiful mind of his. Until she heard him speak in a voice so foreign that it drove a splinter into her heart, his face turning into that of a different person for a moment, green eyes ablaze with something so utterly foreign that she can still feel the ice pouring down her back. It was in this moment that she knew she had to find him another therapist, even if that meant he’d push her away for bringing it up.

Or run away from her.

With a trembling sigh, Frigga kills the engine, climbs out of her car and almost runs into the house and up the stairs to Loki’s room. She knocks softly, calling his name, but she receives no response. When she tries to push down the handle, she finds the door locked.

* * *

Loki’s head and lungs are hurting so badly that his vision starts to blur but he keeps running until he has reached his secret hideout. He doesn’t know if it’s truly _that_ secret but the morons who built it seemed to have forgotten all about it and no one’s ever found him when he stayed here for hours in the past and that’s secret enough for him. He flicks glances over his shoulder in every direction and it gives him at least a tiny bit of satisfaction that his Mom hasn’t followed him. When the door closes behind him, Loki breathes out in relief. He’s in his safe space. Well, technically, it’s not _his_ space. Some stuff still lying around gathering dust and the three idiotic carvings in one of the wooden beams remind him of that. He’s covered them with a messy sketch of a dragon but he still feels the need to look at them every single time he comes here, no matter how tense he is. It’s almost like an invisible force is driving him to do it. He lifts the drawing and looks at the carvings despite the tingling that is roasting his thoughts, tracing them with his shaking index finger, and he only turns away when the explosive mixture of rage and despair threatens to burn his mind to ashes.

 _Stop being so dreadfully sentimental, you foolish little bastard_.

 _Shut up_ , Loki whispers inwardly as he dumps his book bag onto the floor. He drops to his knees, rummaging around the front pocket. He’s always suspected that heroin addicts feel the exact same way when they are in withdrawal, craving their next hit, and that only makes it all the more fucked up, doesn’t it, yes, maybe it _does_ , but he doesn’t really care. He’s a fuck-up anyway, so what does it matter? All he cares about is that his skin will stop doing that crawly thing that makes him want to scrape away all his flesh until he sees bone as soon as he … as soon as …

That’s all that matters.

It’s all that’s mattered for a long time.

Loki breathes out in relief when his fingers close around the item he’s been groping for in a haze. He pulls the tiny little hard plastic box out of his bag and sits down on the wooden floor, crossing his legs, fingers curled around it in an almost solemn anticipation for a moment.

 _Everything’s gonna be fine_.

* * *

Frigga Fjörgyndottir is a strong woman. She grew up as the only child of very sensitive parents who slowly succumbed to emotional distress after her mother gave birth to their third stillborn child. She understood, even at a young age, that their grief wasn’t the result of her not being enough for them but of them wanting to give her a sibling so badly that they possibly tried too hard. She took responsibility. She cared for them. She tried to console them. She tried to make them smile, feeling powerful whenever she succeeded. She tried to make them proud. She worked hard in school, and graduated with honors. She went to university, studying business management, and graduated at the top of her class. Odin recruited her as a manager for his renowned multi-million dollar law firm after meeting her a mere couple of times at the firm she worked at the time. She started managing the firm when she was only twenty-nine.

She has never felt hopeless in the face of a challenge. Not as a girl, not as a teen, not as a woman. Frigga Fjörgyndottir has never truly felt powerless in her entire life.

Not until now.

Despite everything she has achieved, being faced with Loki’s distress makes her feel utterly weak and helpless. It makes her feel so weak that tears of despair are welling into her eyes as she pounds on her son’s door, calling his name in the naïve hope that she’ll receive an answer. Her knees almost give out when she realizes that he isn’t on the other side of the door. That he didn’t run back home. That she came here convinced that he’d locked himself in his room, only to find the empty house mocking her with silence.

Frigga paces the hallway, trying to think of what to do next. There’s a master key to the bedrooms, which she wouldn’t have dreamed of using until today, but she _needs_ to know, doesn’t she? How can she possibly help Loki if she doesn’t know _why_ he is suffering? If he doesn’t talk to her about what is causing him such pain? There’s no excuse for this, she knows there _isn’t_. A few days ago, Frigga would have still condemned every mother resorting to searching their kid’s room for clues but now, after seeing Loki so distraught, she thinks that maybe, just maybe, these frantic mothers have a point. Maybe, desperate times do call for desperate measures.

She inhales sharply and heads for the master bedroom where the key is waiting for her in a drawer but then she halts, her gaze lading on the door of the smaller bathroom on the top floor that is standing slightly ajar. She crosses the hallway towards it in two steps and hesitantly pushes it open as if there’s some menace lurking inside, waiting to pounce on her. Loki used to share this bathroom with his brother before Thor moved out almost a year ago— _how fast time flies_ , _it’s ridiculous really_ , _isn’t it_ —but now it’s his alone and she peers into it with the ridiculous expectation that it’s going to tell her what bothers her youngest or what to do about it.

There’s nothing out of the extraordinary that immediately strikes her. Loki has always kept his things neat and nothing about his collection of cleaning products and makeup lined up on the shelves gives anything away. She still enters the bathroom, surveying every inch but finding nothing. She is about to turn around when she notices a faint smudge right under the toilet. It’s hardly eye-catching but, bending down to inspect it more closely, it looks as if Loki has wiped the floor, leaving only two tiny, washed-out streaks of a brownish-red substance behind.

Her senses heightened, Frigga inspects the bathroom once more and this time she spots single, tiny dark-red droplets here and there. On the grout between the tiles, the walls of the bathtub, the chromed legs of the sink cabinet. Heart pounding faster against her chest, she crouches down on impulse, opening the cabinet. What she finds is a crumpled bathing towel between the cleaning supplies on the bottom shelf, which is not immediately alarming but she pulls it out anyway, wondering why Loki would use one of his fleece towels to wipe his bathroom floor. It still feels half-damp against her fingers, with rust-colored stains at the dried, white edges, and she unfolds it, a sense of dread creeping down her spine.

She holds the towel in front of her for a moment, her mind refusing to attach significance to what she is seeing.

Refusing to realize that the towel is drenched in blood.

* * *

Loki’s heartbeat quickens as he pulls one of the razor blades out of the slot manufactured into the tiny black box and peels away the plastic-paper-foil-thingy wrapped around it. “It’s all gonna go away,” he whispers under his breath, his tone almost motherly, as if he’s trying to console his own fucking self.

 _Pathetic little twat_.

He hears the thought, but only from far, far away, the voice no longer bothering him. Not here. Not when the razor blade is right _there_. It doesn’t matter anymore that he’s a fucking freak. It doesn’t, _it fucking doesn’t_ , because what matters is that he can cut himself free.

Loki rolls up his sleeve, thrusts the corner of the blade deep into his flesh and then tears through his arm. His skin splits open with a soundless sting that is more gratifying and more liberating than any other sensation he’s ever experienced. That split feels sort of like an emergency airway puncture every time. Not literally, of course, because he isn’t choking on anything material or substantial, _duh_ , but he’s choking on his own thoughts and that makes it eerily similar because he—or, rather, _his mind_ —can never breathe freely except in those glorious moments when the razor blade cuts his skin open. It’s the only way to keep his body from doing that itching-crawling thing that makes him want to rip his miserable flesh off his bones and tear it to shreds. The only way to keep his mind from imploding. The only way to muffle all the hatred for _everything_ raging inside of him that he _just doesn’t_ _understand_. The only way to keep the world from being so fucking _loud_.

The chanting, the thoughts, the voices; everything falls silent when Loki’s attention zeroes in on his arm. When he watches that beautiful little trench in his pink flesh fill up with blood until a crimson bubble forms on its surface and then another and another, until the blood finally spills over, running down his arm, caressing him.

His blood feels warm against his skin.

So warm, so soothing.

His thoughts trail off and, not for the first time, Loki longs for a superhuman-science-fiction-comic-book sort of ability that would allow his body to heal itself in a matter of hours so that he could cut more often—more often as _in all the time_ —because, unfortunately, there’s hardly any skin on his arms untouched by the blades now. He used to cut mindlessly for the longest time, repeatedly slicing through his flesh to silence the thoughts and the voices in some sort of trance until his skin looked like a prop for a slasher film when he could see somewhat clearly again.

His mind is begging him to cut mindlessly right now. Every nerve in his body is aching for it, he can sense it, he _always_ can, because as soon as the first drop of blood oozes out, everything inside of him screams for more and there’s no stopping that hunger. There’s no fucking stopping it because, _fuck, fuck, fuck_ , cutting is the best thing in his crappy excuse of a life and he can’t live without it. If only he had _more_ skin to slice into. If only there was more flesh to rip open. More pathetic pale skinny little Loki to cut up.

But there isn’t. He’s almost run out of space. If he cuts mindlessly now, he’s going to reopen the barely scabbing wounds from last night.

He tries to breathe.

Tries to control himself.

Tries to block out Mr. Stokes and Principal Acker and his classmates and his Mom and The Voice and its horrid chanting.

 _Savor that one cut, savor it slowly_. _Wait until it bled out and then, you can have a second and maybe a third_.

His mind stops racing at seventeen.


	3. Long past that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frigga POV. She's trying to figure out what's going on. Maybe not in the greatest way.

_Blood_.

Frigga tries to stifle the panic rising up from the depths of her stomach, telling herself that a bloody towel can mean all sorts of things, not all of them necessarily alarming. Her first instinct is to blame the find on the housekeeper, which would have been very convenient if not for the fact that the woman has been with them for almost ten years, never raising any grievances. If her son had been a daughter, her next inference would have been that Loki had been surprised by his first period and, for the fraction of a second, she wishes that the explanation for Loki’s troubles could be as easy as hormones spiraling out of control during puberty. Maybe he cut himself shaving on the edge of the bathtub, she thinks next, even though there is a lot of blood in the towel for _just_ that. Maybe he had a nosebleed. But, then again, why would he hide the towel in the sink cabinet if that was the case? Maybe he hurt himself trying to fix something but there is nothing in the bathroom that looks different to her. Then again, she can’t remember when she last entered the bathroom, for she usually gives Loki his privacy and doesn’t snoop around his things. Maybe he got into a fight, comes another thought. Maybe he was right about the other students hating him. Maybe they hated him so much that they attacked him. Hurt him. She swallows. _Beat him up_. Her panic gives a violent lurch but then she reminds herself that there were no visible wounds on him last night or this morning and the blood is still somewhat fresh.

Frigga squeezes the towel to her chest and exhales a long breath before she rises to her feet. Propelled by the strong force of utter cluelessness mixed with concern, her legs carry her into the master bedroom and towards the top drawer of her husband’s nightstand where the master key to the top floor rooms is resting inside a little velvet box.

 _I need to know_ , Frigga appeases her protesting conscience as she inserts the key into the lock of Loki’s door. _How could I possibly help him if I don’t know what is bothering him?_ She blows out a sharp breath, turns the key and the door clicks open.

At first, Loki’s bedroom doesn’t look any more suspicious than his bathroom; except for the once green walls he repainted after two weeks of negotiations with Odin a few months ago. Three of them are now charcoal, the fourth behind his bed is black. The dark colors give the room a very oppressive atmosphere that can’t possibly help improve his volatile mood swings. She imagines Loki lying in his bed at night, which is unmade now, sheets rumpled, imagines him surrounded by the dark walls and the creepy horror movie posters of films she never heard of gracing the wall over his bed, wondering how anyone could possibly get a good night’s rest in this room.

On the wall to the left of the door stands Loki’s desk, wedged in between two shelves. The one on the right is holding his impressive book collection and she studies some of the titles. The Philosophy of Evil. The psychopathology of everyday life. The social psychology of stigma.

_He is fifteen, for heaven’s sake._

Frigga briefly asks herself why she is so surprised. Loki has always been way ahead of his age in terms of both intelligence and intellect. Having started school in 3rd grade, he is going to graduate High School the following summer but some of these book titles sound as if you might need half a PhD to fully understand their contents.

_So what you’re saying is that you are more intelligent than your teacher? Is that it?_

_Well, obviously_.

Frigga doesn’t question the truth of her son’s response and realizes with a sinking heart that it was only a matter of time before he’d have a brush with one of his teachers. That she’ll possibly have to consider alternatives.

The shelf to the left of his desk is housing his TV set and Blu-ray collection, the titles of which are, thankfully, a little less sophisticated and a little more age-appropriate, proving that, despite his intellect, he is also still a teenager. Above the desk, he has taped a few of his drawings to the wall, the first one featuring a giant serpent emerging from a roaring sea. The image seems vaguely familiar to her even though she can’t recall where she has seen it before. The second portrays a vampire with sharp fangs and long, silver-blue hair half-silhouetted by darkness, blood dripping from his lips, and the last a white tiger, poised in attack mode on a rock, snout gaping open.

 _Predators_ , thinks Frigga as she admires his artwork for a moment. _They are all predators_.

The desk itself is almost empty, except for Loki’s laptop, his drawing pad, his phone charger and a few blank drawing sheets and markers. Yes, he’s always kept his things very neat. Frigga knows she should leave. She probably isn’t going to find any evidence in here either and, apart from that, she knows that she shouldn’t invade Loki’s privacy like this. She knows that she should wait for him to come home, sit him down gently and tell him that she is worried and wants the best for him. She also knows that Loki isn’t overly susceptible to such conversation at the moment, though, and the bloody towel stuffed into the bathroom cabinet pops into her mind again.

Before Frigga knows what her hands are doing, she has opened the top drawer of his desk. What she finds is nothing but electronic devices and cable clutter—different chargers, an old digital camera with a scratched display that she is pretty sure was Thor’s, a remote, his old phone, headsets, memory cards, a LAN cable, an external hard drive, another graphic tablet. Nothing alarming. The middle drawer reveals his collection of artistic materials—markers, crayons, pencils, charcoal crayons, acrylic and watercolor paints, all neatly stacked. She opens the bottom drawer, which contains a collection of sketchbooks. She pulls out the first one, heart quickening, but then realizes that the drawings are from last year because there is a rough draft for the drawing of a jungle scenery, which he gave to her because she fell in love with it and which has been hanging in her office since December. The ones in the second sketchbook underneath that are even older. There’s eight sketchbooks in total, in reverse chronological order, and the one at the bottom dates back all the way to elementary school. She thumbs through the pages, feeling a smile tugging at the corners of her lips several times at the blissfully childish innocence of these drawings.

Frigga rummages through the stack once more, searching for the sketchbook with a black leather binding that was among his Christmas gifts last year and that should be on top but is nowhere to be found.

 _He might have it with him_ , Frigga thinks even as her gaze falls on the unmade bed and the nightstand beside it, her heart slamming against her ribcage. _I shouldn’t spy upon him any more than I already have_. _I shouldn’t betray his trust by prying into the things he clearly doesn’t want anyone to see_. Before she can identify the thought propelling her into action despite the pricks of her conscience, she has crossed the room. Opened the nightstand’s drawer.

There’s nothing alarming in there either. A pack of Kleenex, hand lotion, a pair of fleece socks, which might be _a bit_ unusual at this time of the year, a couple of bookmarks, a set of extra light bulbs for the bedside lamp, a little tin of vapor rub from the last cold he had, a pencil. She closes the drawer again, preparing to admit defeat and leave, but, still, something doesn’t look, doesn’t _feel_ quite right. Frigga can’t tell if she’s succumbing to panic-induced paranoia or if her maternal instinct heightens her perception but something about the drawer is nagging at the edges of her consciousness. She opens and closes it again, seeing nothing. She repeats the procedure three times until it occurs to her that the drawer somehow looks bigger on the outside than it does on the inside. She traces the inside bottom of the drawer with her finger on the outside and realizes that there’s about five inches between the bottom she can see inside and the actual bottom on the outside.

Frigga tries to lift the false bottom but its edges line up perfectly with the inside of the drawer and she breaks a nail in the attempt to uncover the secrets her son is hiding as if he suspected that they would search his room sooner or later. Of _course_ he did. He’s too smart for his own good.

She puts her finger into her mouth to bite off the portion of her nail that broke, foolishly thinking that this is a sign that she should leave. That she should talk to him instead of going behind his back but now that she is so close … She crouches down to inspect the actual bottom of the drawer from below and discovers a tiny, inconspicuous hole. Without consciously thinking about it, she reaches for the pencil inside the drawer and inserts it into the hole, gently pressing the false bottom upwards.

There’s the leather-bound sketchbook. And underneath it, there’s all sorts of medical supplies. Band-Aids, dressing strips, elastic bandages, gauze pads, scissors, wound spray, antiseptic ointment.

_No._

**_No, no, no, no_**.

Her heart pounding to a staccato rhythm of sheer panic inside her chest, Frigga opens the sketchbook with sweaty, trembling fingers. The first twenty pages or so show more predators, mostly angry reptiles. Snakes, dragons, fantasy creatures. Then, there’s a drawing of a black, barely-human-looking hooded creature being chained to the bottom of what looks like Hell, flames licking its body.

Frigga keeps flicking through the sketchbook, a lump of fear forming in her throat as she lowers herself to a sitting position on her son’s bed. There’s a few drawings of an anime cartoon character bearing a strong resemblance to Loki himself that is conversing with some sort of spirit enshrouded in a dark hood, which sends her heart onto another rollercoaster ride.

Next, there’s a drawing of a head next to a drawing of a skull that has an abyss inside of it, in which a gleaming black substance is bubbling, slowly rising up.

Then, there’s a drawing of an unidentifiable cartoon character that is lying on the floor of a public bathroom, arms covering their face to protect it against a group of four sneering boys who are kicking the cowering frame. On the next page, she sees those same boys, one pressing the same person’s face against a wall, one locking the person’s arms behind their back, one ramming his knee into the person’s crotch from behind, one filming the scene with a mobile phone and a smug grin on his face.

_Why didn’t he just paint a target on my fucking back?_

Frigga feels so nauseous that she has to close her eyes, pausing to breathe for a moment.

When she flips the page, she sees a gloomy rendition of Scar from the Lion King, who is devouring the cadaver of Mufasa in the canyon. Mufasa’s body is half-skeleton, half-flesh-torn-apart, blood and shreds of meat dripping from Scar’s snout that is curled into a devious sneer. There’s splatters of blood on the page as well and they’re so well drawn that they look deceptively real.

Frigga shudders at the cruelty of that drawing.

One of the last pages contains a few sketches of a razor blade from different perspectives, some of them with blood dripping from the blade, some of them sinking into a pool of blood. She hastily turns the page and sees a drawing of another random androgynous cartoon character driving the razor blade into their thigh, blood spurting from the wound like water from a fire hose.

The sketchbook slips from her hands and lands on the floor with a thud.

 _No, Loki wouldn’t do that_.

 _He **wouldn’t**_.

Her gaze flits across the room. On impulse, she removes the pillow, finding nothing. She frisks the bedsheet next, her stomach churning. When she doesn’t find anything, she leaps to her feet to crouch down beside the bed and lift the mattress, pushing it away. It takes her brain several seconds to register what she sees and when it does, she almost passes out.

There’s two packs of Wilkinson double edge razor blades, 10 blades each, and lots of washcloths and tissues and paper towels or toilet paper, all of them dark with dried blood.

 _No, he can’t_ _do that to himself._

_He **wouldn’t**._

As if in trance, Frigga unwraps one of the blades, turning it in her fingers, her mind filling with horrific images of Loki mutilating himself with its sharp edges. As she sits there, tears stinging her eyes and clawing at the back of her throat, memories of the past summer keep pouring into her mind. She hasn’t seen him wear anything except for black long-sleeved shirts for God only knows how long. Hasn’t seen him use the pool. Hasn’t seen him emerge from his bathroom with nothing but a towel wrapped around his lower body as he used to in forever. Hasn’t been able to talk him into spending a single weekend in their Malibu beach house even though he used to cherish these days in the past. 

“So, it appears I _did_ forfeit my right to privacy with my outburst, huh?” Frigga’s head snaps up at the sound of her son’s voice, shock slamming into her. Loki is leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom, arms crossed across his skinny chest. He is narrowing his eyes at her in what might have looked like anger if not for the fact that he looks so tired and his black makeup is smeared as if he’s been crying. “I figured as much,” he says flatly, his lips almost white. His skin looks even paler than usual and now she finally knows why. _Oh God_.

“Loki,” Frigga whispers. She places the razor blade onto the nightstand and slowly stands up. “I-I am sorry. I-I shouldn’t have … I was just …” She crosses the room until she is standing right in front of him. “I-I didn’t know what to do,” she whispers. “You wouldn’t talk to me and I thought I could …”

Loki’s eyebrows hike up. “Rest assured, mother. It’s not what you think it is,” he says when she can’t bring herself to finish her apology and his detached tone pours a bucketful of ice water down her spine. “Well, I suppose it _is_ what you _think_ it is, but you interpret it within a very narrow framework of meaning.”

“ _What_?” Frigga exclaims before she can prevent her mouth from gaping open in confusion. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” _These book titles_. _The way he speaks_. _The clash with his teacher_. _It’s really no surprise that he stands out in school_. _He doesn’t belong with the average High School senior_.

“You probably think I am hurting myself,” Loki replies, inexplicably charging to the offensive. “But that’s already a negative evaluation of a neutral action.”

“ _Neutral_?” Frigga’s face falls. “You can’t possibly—”

“Just think about it,” Loki cuts in and Frigga senses the eloquently crafted subterfuge that is coming and the explanation that rolls off his tongue with such ease that she would have instantly believed him if he wasn’t in so much pain doesn’t disappoint. “There are peoples all over the world who manipulate their bodies in a way we would interpret as self-mutilation. But for them, it’s not. It’s part of their culture. Just like tattoos and piercings are part of ours but, honestly, if you get a tattoo, the artist thrusts a sharp object through your skin, making you bleed. Same with piercings.” He pointedly gazes at her earrings. “That’s hurtful, I suppose, but it’s considered to be fashion or _body_ _art_ , not self-harm.”

“Loki, please.” Frigga exhales a long breath, trying to buy herself some time to gather her wits.

“What?” There’s a flicker of annoyance in his eyes because he probably thinks she’s dismissing his remarks; which she _is_ , for heaven’s sake, not because he’s _wrong_ per se but because his words are an attempt at eluding the conversation they need to have. Loki tilts his head to the side and cocks his left eyebrow in a way that makes him look incredibly smug and for the first time, she understands why this small gesture of contempt sends Odin’s temper through the roof sometimes. “You can’t deny how these evaluations of what people do and don’t do to their bodies are subjective at best.”

Frigga’s thoughts start racing away from her as she tries to find an answer that will catch him off-guard. She’s had dealings with lawyers for the last two decades of her life but Loki is something else. With his eloquence and his intellect, he’d be able to argue the most successful lawyers she ever met out of court in less than ten minutes. He’d be the obvious choice to take over the family business but Odin is not-so-silently struggling against the idea because of the way “he’s acting out on purpose to make him look bad”. Frigga can’t completely eliminate the possibility that part of Loki’s rebellious behavior is indeed purposeful provocation. For some reason, it’s beginning to look as if he is utterly convinced that Odin would _never_ want him to join the firm, that he always wanted Thor to take his place, and Loki is doing everything in his power to prove this misconception of his to be true. Even though that thought is ridiculous because Thor already _told_ Odin that he was no longer interested in either his law degree or taking over the family business and, apart from that, they all know that Thor neither possesses the rhetorical skills nor the ability to convincingly sell a lie that he’d need in order to—

“Mom,” Loki snaps. “You’re zoning out on me!”

“I’m not,” she brings herself to say.

“You’re not even listening,” Loki complains.

“I am and you’re probably right.” Frigga can’t stop another exasperated sigh from slipping past her lips. “But what other people do or don’t do is beside the point.”

Loki’s eyes are narrow slits, smudged with eyeliner and exhaustion. “The point being?”

“I can _see_ that you are in pain,” says Frigga.

“So are many people,” Loki replies matter-of-factly. “The fucked-up society we live in makes a lot of people suffer. There’s no need to get worked up over _that_.”

“I don’t _care_ about other people,” Frigga insists in a trembling voice, inwardly chiding herself for such a copybook motherly response. “I care about _you_. Please, Loki. Talk to me,” Frigga pleads, tears creeping into her voice. “You don’t have to go through this alone. I love you and I want to help you,” she whispers, hoping she can pierce through her son’s emotional defenses with a declaration of her love. She stretches out her hand, carefully trying to cup his cheek but he flinches from her touch, jerking his head away.

“I think you should leave,” Loki says in that alien voice she heard in the car before. He inhales a shaky breath and pushes himself off the doorframe. He is swaying a little as he turns away from her and crosses his room to his bed where he sits down, slumps down rather, looking incredibly weak, like the prey rather than the predator of a vampire narrative.

A lump forms in her throat. “Loki, please,” she repeats, still at a loss for words.

“I want to be alone,” Loki whispers and he barely seems to have enough energy to keep his eyes open.

“No, you don’t,” Frigga replies softly before she tries one last time. She vows to herself that she’ll leave him be if he pushes her away _again_ but she knows that she must try one more time. She walks back towards the bed to sit down beside him, reaching for one of his hands. This time, he doesn’t flinch and she takes his right hand into both of hers, squeezing it gently. “I know you don’t want to be alone.”

“If you say so,” Loki responds. He’s probably meant the remark to sound snarky but his voice is too shaky to convey it. It’s _dreadfully_ shaky.

“Will you … show me?” Frigga asks before she can stop herself, her heart leaping into her throat at the realization that this intrusive question is _definitely_ going to push him further away.

Loki cackles, lips starting to quiver. “You’ve seen enough, don’t you think?” He snorts, half-sob, half-laugh, but after that brief display of weakness, the anger she’s become so familiar with seeps back into his voice. “Honestly, I _never_ thought you’d break into my room and snoop on me. _Shit_ , Mom, didn’t it occur to you that a locked door is usually a directive to stay _the fuck_ away? I thought you were better than this but apparently you’re exactly like _all the other_ mothers who think they have a fucking right to know _everything_ their kids are doing!”

Frigga draws a sharp breath. “Well, technically—”

“Just get out!” Loki screams in that strange voice, blazing green eyes fixed on her.

“Alright,” Frigga concedes after the initial shock. Her heart aches to console him but she promised that she’d leave him alone if he pushed her away one more time and so she rises to her feet, reaching for the razor blades and scooping up both the packs and the single one on the nightstand.

“Seriously?” Loki stares all his rage into her. “You’re _seriously_ taking them away?” He laughs and there’s an echo of hysteria in the sound. “Oh right. Because I have no knowledge of where the next drugstore is. I couldn’t _possibly_ buy new ones.” He locks eyes with her and, for a moment, he does look like one of the predators he drew, as if there is a feral part inside of him that wants to rip her throat open.

Frigga turns around so he won’t see the tears welling into her eyes. “I’m only trying to protect you,” she whispers.

“We’re long past that,” is the last thing she hears before she closes the door behind her and breaks out sobbing.


	4. What are you afraid of?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter of me trying to write motherly feels. I don't know how you would really feel but this is what I imagine Frigga is going through.

_Holy fucking shit_.

Loki’s heart almost ruptures in his chest as the door clicks shut and he hears his Mom sob in that peculiar way only a Mom crying over her child can sob, pitying herself, victimizing herself; as if she didn’t just break into his room to ransack it for evidence CSI style. Honestly, who the hell would look for a false bottom in the nightstand drawer of a fifteen-year-old teenage boy? What did she think she was gonna find? A weapon? A diary in which he is fantasizing about blowing his school to kingdom come? An instruction to build a bomb?

Who knows what she’s really thinking of him.

 _Freak_. _We should consider a therapist_. _We need to fix you. Freak, freak, freak_.

The only thing Loki knows for sure is that she can’t have been _looking_ for the razor blades. Cutting isn’t something that just occurs to a person, much less a mother. A mother would never want to believe _that_. A mother’s brain would try to protect her from that possibility for as long as possible.

No, she must have been looking for something else.

He drops to his knees and reaches for the sketchbook, trying to remember what he drew in there when he was drunk the last times, flipping through the pages, his heartbeat reverberating like a jungle drum in his ears. It’s all gone now, thanks to her, all the relief, as if he never drove a blade into his flesh after school. Once more, he can hardly breathe. His head hurts. His mind is speeding, _again_ , challenging his heart to a race, and the contours of his room are turning dark and blurry in front of his eyes.

_When was the last time you ate something?_

_No time for food_.

Loki blinks, trying to get his vision to sharpen again. _Shit, shit, shit_ , is all he can think as the sketchbook swims back into focus and his eyes trace the drawings on the last few pages. _Pathetic fucktard_. _Why did you draw shit like this, you little worm? Why didn’t you try harder to just deal with it? Now, she fucking knows_. _She knows everything_. Well, maybe not everything but, still, _why did you allow her to bust you like this, you worthless little wimp? Why didn’t you carry the sketchbook with you at all times?_

Because, if he keeps it with him, those stupid jackasses frequenting the seething cauldron authorities call High School will find it when they empty his book bag onto the hallway floor to rifle through its contents in front of everyone. 

_It’s her fault, not yours_ , whispers The Voice from the depths of the accursed abyss that is his mind. _You thought you could rely on her but she betrayed you_.

Loki breathes out in annoyance. He can’t have a conversation with The Voice right now. He already blew it before when he snarled at his Mom and now he has to fix the mess he made. He has to make sure she doesn’t draw the wrong conclusions from either the blades or the drawings she saw. Has to make sure she doesn’t overreact. Make sure she doesn’t tell his Dad or call the school or send him to therapy or—

 _Tell Thor_.

“You shut the hell up,” Loki growls. “Now!” He takes another deep breath. His knees are wobbly. His head is filled with cotton wool. White dots appear in front of his eyes every time he opens them. His fingers are ice, his heart a furnace.

 _I need to eat something … I need to talk to her … I need to … She can’t tell Thor_. _Thor can’t ever know about this_. **_Not ever_**.

Loki stumbles out of his room and down the stairs but he suddenly feels entirely depleted, as if some invisible drainpipe has sucked all his energy out of his body over the course of the day, causing his bones and muscles to suddenly shrink or disintegrate or dissolve and, _holy hell_ , that doesn’t feel right, _yikes, yikes, yikes_ , this is the worst, _the absolute worst_ , it’s worse than the urge to tear his own flesh off his bones, come on, _why the fuck are you doing this to me, stupid body, why can’t you just behave?_ Maybe it’s the blood loss, _yes_ , _you’ve been cutting way too much_ , _you need to give yourself a break_ , no, shut up, it’s just low blood sugar and lack of sleep, don’t worry, I just need to eat something and the kitchen is down there, yes, it’s right _there_ , but _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ , the stairs seem endless, with the bottom nowhere in sight, as if he’s been trapped in some weird, twisted _Alice in Wonderland_ or _Inception_ kind of situation and, _fuck_ , his brain suddenly seems to be dissolving too, can’t tell Thor, no, no, no, no, _stop her_ , and his vision is swimming and, _shit, shit, shit_ , why can’t he reach the banister rail, oh wait, there it is, careful now, very careful, _don’t fall_ , _don’t make it worse_ , _just take a break_ , _just breathe_ , _just try not to die_ , wait, who says that would be a bad thing, true, true, _so either die or get your fucking shit together but make it one of the two_.

* * *

“Mom?”

Frigga’s head snaps up from the vegetables she’s chopping for Loki’s favorite soup in the hope that he’ll accept the gesture as the proverbial olive branch because it’ll remind him of all the times she sat by his bedside when he was sick as a child, spoon-feeding him whatever soup experts praised as the ultimate cold remedy at the time. She didn’t expect him to come out of his room so soon, was sure he’d brood at least until dinner, not only forty minutes, and hastily wipes the tears away that are still streaming silently down her face. There’s no need for him to see her cry. No need for him to think that he hurt or upset her. No need to add to his distress.

“I’m sorry that I yelled at you,” Loki says in a hoarse voice as he tiptoes into the large, open plan kitchen, his voice thin and brittle. “I know you were just trying to … help? I guess?”

“I’m sorry that I spied on you,” Frigga replies, choosing to momentarily forgo the speech about how she never thought she’d search his room either but that he probably won’t understand what drove her to it until he has to watch his own child suffering like this with no knowledge about what’s wrong and no way to help them. “I should have put more effort into trying to talk to you.”

Loki gives a nod and walks—well, wobbles—towards the fridge. Frigga briefly thinks about trying to sweep him into hug him once more when he passes her but she successfully stifles the urge.

 _How small he looks_ , Frigga marvels. He is turning sixteen in less than three months but right now, he doesn’t look like a teenager. He looks like a small child, slumped into himself and fragile despite his dark make-up and rebellious outfit, and the image of him standing in front of the open fridge blends into a memory she has long forgotten but can see very clearly now. Loki perching on Thor’s shoulders the day after his fifth birthday, bobbing up and down excitedly as he’s trying to reach the rest of the home-baked muffins and Halloween candy that Frigga put into a sandwich box and stowed away on the highest shelf. Thor admonishing him to sit still because “if you keep moving, I’m gonna drop you, dummy,” and Loki giving a small but fiercely negative shake of his head.

If Frigga Fjörgyndottir were an actress in a musical comedy, she would grab the vegetable knife to use it as a microphone and start singing the following lines:

_The feeling that I’m losing him forever  
And without really entering his world  
Slipping through my fingers all the time  
I try to capture every minute  
The feeling in it  
Slipping through my fingers all the time  
Do I really see what’s in his mind  
Each time I think I'm close to knowing  
He keeps on growing  
Slipping through my fingers all the time_

And if her life were as simple as _Mamma Mia_ , Loki would join in after a few verses and they would finish the song together and Loki would snuggle up to her and everything would be fine. Yet, instead of bonding through shared vocal bliss, Loki retrieves a water bottle from the fridge, slams the door shut and sways again, almost tumbles, reaching for the edges of the kitchen island to steady himself.

“Honey, are you still drunk?” Frigga asks as she grabs his shoulders for support and gently sits him down on one of the bar stools. “Come here.”

“I wasn’t even drunk this morning,” Loki grumbles. “Don’t you ever _listen_ to me?” He doesn’t wait for her answer though. He opens the water bottle and empties it in three large gulps. “I’m just …” He looks as if he’s going to say something more, his jaw clenching and unclenching rapidly, but eventually he keeps his thoughts to himself. _As always_.

“I’m making soup,” Frigga announces and dares to advance as far as stroking his back. _Oh please, eat something_ , she silently pleads as she feels the sharp knuckles of his spine against her palm. “Potato-leek soup with prawns.” She pauses a beat because it occurs to her that she can’t be sure it’s still his favorite. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“My body is,” Loki replies with the faintest shadow of a smile on his lips.

“Now, that’s a start, isn’t it?” Frigga smiles back before she turns her attention back to the vegetables.

“What’s gonna happen now?” Loki asks her after a while, his eyes glued to his hands that are playing with the empty water bottle.

“I know you’re not overly thrilled by the idea,” Frigga begins, stealing herself for another outburst, “but you’re going to see a therapist, Loki.”

His face screws up in a grimace of revulsion. “Mom, I don’t need a—”

“Loki, I have no way of knowing how badly you’re hurting yourself,” Frigga cuts in, as softly and considerately as she possibly can.

“Is that a more subtle way of asking me if I’m gonna show you?” Loki asks, eyebrows hiking up in suspicion, his mind still racing despite his apparent exhaustion, still conspiring against him.

“No.” Frigga blows out a breath. “You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to. I suppose it’s a very … intimate …” _Thing? Experience? Ritual?_ Her voice trails off. “But I can’t know how deep or how …”

“I’m not gonna kill myself,” Loki helps her out. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Maybe not intentionally but I can’t know if it might happen accidentally and for as long as I can’t be sure of that, I won’t stand back and watch you destroy yourself,” Frigga insists. He is grinding his teeth but stays silent. “Because I know that you’re not cutting yourself”— _oh, how bitter those two little words taste on her tongue_ —“because you think of it as a form of body art. You have a lot of pain and rage inside of you that you don’t know how to express other than by antagonizing others and going against yourself. You need to learn healthier ways to cope with whatever is bothering you.”

“Maybe.” Loki exhales a long breath, and the flicker in his eyes tells her that he’s planning his next argumentative move. “But therapy? You dragged me to that therapist when I was a kid and it didn’t work. What makes you think it’s gonna work now?” She pierces his gaze with the determination in her eyes and his shoulders slump. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“You don’t.” Frigga shakes her head as she scrapes the sliced onions, potatoes and leeks into the saucepan in which butter has been melting. “I mean, I’m under no illusion that I can control whether you’ll continue to sabotage yourself once you’re _in_ therapy but I’ll leave no stone unturned to give you a chance to maybe not sabotage yourself for once.”

Loki grimaces again but his expression seems less belligerent. He fumbles around with his bracelets for a while. “Can you at least … not tell anyone?”

A slightly affronted laugh escapes Frigga’s mouth. “What do you think of me, huh? That I’ll be going around the neighborhood, spreading gossip about you?”

“No, I meant like Dad and … Thor,” Loki whispers so quietly that she can’t even be sure she heard right. “I don’t want them to know what a freak I really am.”

“Honey, nobody thinks that you are a freak,” Frigga says softly, to which her son only snorts. She cups his chin, locking eyes with him, sensing that she’s finally about to breach his emotional defenses. “Loki, look at me. You’re going through a hard time that has affected your mental health and I assure you, neither your father nor your brother are going to think any less of you because of that.”

“You can’t know that,” Loki whispers and the tears he’s been trying so hard to dam up earlier finally well into his eyes. “Thor’s just like _them_ … He’s gonna …” He suppresses a sob that comes out as a squeak. “Forget it, Mom. I just—” He jerks away from her and jumps to his feet, trying to escape, to withdraw into himself and swallow it all down, but she grabs him by the shoulders and gently pushes him back down.

“No, Loki,” she says and softly brushes her lips against his pale forehead. “I won’t just _forget it_. I don’t know why you don’t trust me anymore. I mean, after today, okay, but before that. You always told me everything. I don’t know when you started assuming I mean you harm by asking you what’s bothering you. Nor do I understand why. I want to help you, Loki. I love you and, more than anything, I want you to be happy. And so does Thor. And your father.”

He shakes his head, his tears spilling over his eyelids and lashes, streaming down his cheeks. He angrily wipes them away as if they betrayed him. “Thor’s not gonna understand any of this. He’s a witless, alpha male brute who thrives off college football. _College football_ , Mom,” Loki spits, wiping his eyes once more. “He’s part of what’s wrong with the higher education system. Jocks like him always assume that people like me are goddamn emo freaks and nerds and faggots. Maybe you need to go back to High School for a week to be reminded of how the system works.”

Frigga bites her tongue to keep her mouth from probing him about his brother or their relationship in order to prevent another shutdown but makes a mental note to call Thor later to ask what’s been going on between them lately. When they were younger, Thor was Loki’s hero. God, how fiercely he admired him! He clung to his older brother like a magnet, following him everywhere, and Thor always protected him, always looked out for him. Despite the four and a half years separating them, Thor mostly let him tag along, even when he was a teenager, seemingly aware of how much Loki needed him. She can’t recall why or when exactly Loki started pushing Thor away the same way he’s trying to push her and everyone else away now or when exactly Thor started fighting back after an initial period of trying to just silently endure his little brother’s temper tantrums. All she knows is that, suddenly, insults were flying back and forth between them _all the time_. The tension between them escalated even more in the months leading up to the moment Thor finally worked up the nerve to tell his father that he was aspiring to become a professional football player and get recruited out of college by the NFL. That he’d never been interested in taking over the law firm because he’s not a lawyer and never would be. Despite knowing her husband and his temper, even Frigga did not anticipate that Odin, in his foolish mortification, would make the precipitous decision to kick Thor out of the family home for his disrespect.

 _Neither Thor nor his relationship with Loki should be the focal point of your attention right now_ , Frigga chides herself even though she can’t quite bring herself to forget Loki telling Thor how glad he was to finally be rid of him when he gathered his things to move into one of Tony Stark’s apartments all the way across town after Odin’s outburst.

“I won’t tell Thor anything, I promise,” Frigga assures Loki while she’s trying to think of the best way to approach the elephant in the room.

Loki manages a weak smile. “Thank you.”

Still at a loss for words, Frigga decides to just dive headfirst into the bullying issue. “Is that what’s going on in school, honey? Are people calling you all those names?”

Loki squirms on his stool. “Nothing’s going on in school, Mom.”

“Honey, I saw your drawings,” Frigga reminds him.

“Of course you did. You were being really thorough, weren’t you?” Loki snaps but he seems to have taken himself by surprise with the hostility in his voice. “I-I’m sorry.”

“Just tell me, my love,” Frigga pleads softly. She busies herself with the soup again, not taking her eyes off her son as she takes a third of the boiled vegetables out of the saucepan with a scoop, fills it into a bowl, pours milk into the saucepan and mashes the remaining two thirds until they turn into a creamy, softly bubbling substance on the stove.

When he can’t take the silence building up between them anymore, Loki draws a sharp breath. “They hate me is what’s going on,” he whispers. “Everyone does. But that’s hardly surprising, is it? Those kids are frighteningly dumb and they feel threatened by what I represent, so they lash out to mask their own insecurities. It’s understandable.”

“ _Understandable_?” Frigga echoes, almost dropping the nutmeg shaker into the pan. “Honey, if you’re being bullied—”

“Even if I were, what would you do about it?” Loki asks in a brittle voice. “Intervene?” He snorts a laugh. “That would only increase the power imbalance and thus fertilize the soil on which bullying can thrive.”

Frigga wishes he’d stop talking like this but she knows she can’t ever give voice to this thought because he’d interpret it as another piece of evidence that he’s wrong the way he is when, in reality, all she wishes for him is to experience his teenage years without the burden of all the knowledge he acquired throughout the years.

“Those scenes that you drew,” Frigga continues because she can’t banish the drawing of that terrified person cowering alone and vulnerable on the floor of a public school bathroom in a fetal position from her mind. “Did your classmates … hurt you?”

Loki remains silent.

“Loki, if anyone did something to you, they won’t get away with it. You know that, right? You don’t have to protect them.”

There is another long silence.

“It doesn’t matter, Mom,” Loki says eventually. “They’re just …” He buries his head in his hands. “It doesn’t matter.”

Frigga senses fumes of anger wafting up inside of her at his apparent compliance. “What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not _afraid_ ,” Loki shouts but his voice is way too shrill. “I’m just … Mom, I’m hungry. I think I’m gonna pass out if you don’t hurry that soup along.”

Reluctantly, she lets the topic go. Loki isn’t going to tell her what’s going on, let alone who is involved in whatever is going on, because he is convinced he’ll face the consequences on another bathroom floor if he opens his mouth. She graduated high school over thirty-five years ago but the dynamics of bullying have not changed since then and she knows that there’s only one way she can help him out of his misery. “I’m going to find you a private tutor to help you prepare for your SATs,” Frigga decides on a whim.

Loki’s eyes widen in astonishment. “What?”

“I’m going to take you out of High School,” she clarifies. “You don’t have to go back to that school or any other school, if you don’t want to.”

Loki stares at her, lips and eyes wide open as his mind processes this turn of events.

“Our education system is built on the misconception that everyone needs the same sort of education,” Frigga replies even though that is only half the truth. The other half is that she is horrified at the thought of her boy suffering any form of physical or emotional abuse in that building one more time. Not if she can help it. “You probably know that better than I do. From what I’ve seen today and how you articulate yourself in general, a normal school environment can’t possibly satisfy your intellectual needs. I should have realized that a lot sooner.”

“B-but it’s just a-another year, Mom,” Loki stammers, tears shimmering in his eyes. “Y-you don’t expect me to finish?” He sits up straighter. “Wh-what about Dad?”

“Don’t you worry about your Dad, honey.” Frigga smiles at him. “ _That_ is my job. Now, if you’ll get me the prawns out of the fridge, we can eat in five.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapters are going to have more Loki-POV again, I promise.


	5. Dr. Darcy

**_Monday, September 2 nd, 2019_ **

****

**_27 days to the incident_ **

  
The shrink’s name is Mark Darcy. He’s wearing a navy blue suit, _of course he is_ , and he is about fifty, maybe a bit younger, maybe a bit older, _who can tell really_ , with hair that surely was brown at some point but is now mostly laced with gray and a pair of glasses on his long, pointed nose. Other than that, his face is rather unremarkable and sports a desperately-trying-to-look-pleasant expression. In short, he looks utterly shrink-ish. Not that Loki has ever seen a shrink for quasi grown-ups in real life before. All his knowledge comes from pop-cultural representations and isn’t it funny— _scary_ —how true these stereotypical depictions turn out to be true every so often? Maybe those people who produce movies and write books milking Hollywood for a living actually take some real life inspiration occasionally. Or maybe it’s the other way around and people who look like that identify with the shrinks on screen and arrive at the debatable conclusion that psychotherapy has to be their life fulfillment. It doesn’t matter, really, because it’s not his appearance that makes Loki cringe. It’s his name.

Dr. fucking _Darcy_.

How do you not change your name if you open up a therapist’s office and your name is Darcy? How could his Mom possibly think that it was a good idea to make an appointment with a therapist whose name is _Dr_. _fucking Darcy_? Loki has no clue.

“Hello,” says the shrink and Loki decides that he won’t call him by his name, not even in his head. He will just refer to the guy as ‘the shrink’ because that’s less likely to make him burst out laughing. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Loki folds his arms across his chest. “You don’t _really_ mean that, do you?”

The shrink’s lips twitch just slightly but Loki can tell he took him by surprise with his very first words and the realization fills him with glee. “Why wouldn’t I mean it?”

“Because you’re getting paid to see me,” Loki points out. “So, let’s not pretend you’re truly interested in me beyond the money my mother’s paying you, which, I suppose, must be quite a sum, considering that you were available on such short notice.” He shrugs. “Either that, or you really suck at what you’re doing and, I’ll be honest, neither of those two options makes a conversation with you seem worth my time.”

The shrink’s eyes narrow. “Are you suggesting that people who aspire to practice psychotherapy do it for the money?”

“Maybe not at first,” Loki allows. “People tend to be very idealistic when they’re choosing a career but, let’s face it, after a while, everything comes down to money in the system that we live in. Are you suggesting that this is not the case?” He flashes the shrink a challenging smirk.

“I’m not but those two things aren’t always mutually exclusive, you know,” he points out after a short pause and the undertone of exasperation in his voice is deeply gratifying. “You _can_ earn money doing what you’re passionate about.”

Loki shrugs once more. “If you say so.”

“So, what brings you here?”

Gosh, his creaky voice is already grating on Loki’s nerves. “My mother’s idiotic misconception that there is something wrong with me.”

The shrink’s face scrunches up with curiosity. “Did she say that?”

“She didn’t have to,” Loki snaps. _It’s painfully obvious_. Granted, she tried to make amends after ransacking his room, honestly tried to be pleasant, even offered to take him out of school, for which he’s still grateful because the prospect of never having to deal with all those simpletons in that hellhole ever again soothed his racing mind at least a little these past days. But, despite her promise not to tell Thor anything, she rang him a few days later. Not that she told Loki about it, no, _of course not_ , but Thor texted him one night, asking him if everything was alright and why the fuck would he do that out of nowhere? Thor doesn’t care about him anymore, which Loki knows because Thor never bothered to text him again when he didn’t respond, but still, his Mom had to let his brother know that something was wrong with him. He can almost hear her words. _There’s something wrong with your brother, Thor_. _He’s losing his mind_. _I had to send him to therapy_. _Thank God you turned out pretty decent_. _Thank God at least one of my sons isn’t all w_ _rong, wrong, wrong_.

“So, you know what your mother is thinking?” asks the shrink, pulling him out of his thoughts. “That’s interesting.”

 _That tone_. Loki really doesn’t like that tone. His eyes narrow to slits. “Why?”

The shrink gives a far too casual, equally unlikeable shrug that sends Loki’s whole body into high alert. “Do other people generally know what _you_ are thinking?”

He has a point. Loki really doesn’t like that he has a point either. There’s absolutely nothing about that man that he likes. His nerves stretch so tight that he thinks they’ll tear. “They don’t,” he replies through clenched teeth. “But, then again, my mind is like a jungle and most people’s minds are withering little flowers in comparison. Most of the time, it’s not that hard to tell what’s going on in other people’s heads.”

The shrink’s eyebrows hike up. “Your mother’s mind is a withering little flower?”

 _Does he really have to make it that difficult?_ “I didn’t say that,” Loki protests.

The shrink flashes him a pleasant smile that sets his intestines on fire. “So how do you know that she’s thinking there’s something wrong with you if she never said so? Are you a mentalist?”

Loki fumes at his interrogation-like conversation style. “Are _you_ trying to piss me off right away? Because if that’s your objective, it’s working.”

He seems unperturbed. “What makes you angry right now?”

“You,” Loki snarls, his anger erupting like a volcano in the pit of his stomach. He tries to quench it because he’s fully aware that he won’t get anywhere with this guy if he allows his emotions to submerge him. _Keep calm_. _Just keep it the fuck together for once!_

“I didn’t ask who.” Another gratingly pleasant smile. _Hit him over the head_. “I asked what.”

“Your tone,” growls The Voice, hijacking Loki’s mouth once more before he even realized it was there at all. _Fuck, fuck, fuck, this can’t keep happening_. “Your voice. Not to be impolite or anything but, frankly, I find the way you speak rather disagreeable. It does feel a bit like sandpaper on my eardrums.”

The man’s lips part in surprise and Loki can see that he caught him unawares, maybe even hurt him a little, and the knowledge makes him feel powerful in some weird ass way because hurting _himself_ no longer _really_ works. It doesn’t liberate him from his own wretched self anymore and only soothes the desire to claw his own brain out for maybe a few minutes at a time. And especially now that his Mom knows, he feels guilty every time too because it makes her so fucking sad— _she’d better stop crying and deal with it, she’s supposed to be a fucking adult after all—_ and even if he managed to cut down to the bone, it wouldn’t truly change anything anyway, would it, _no_ , because he is Loki and Loki is just wrong, isn’t he, yes, he’s a mishap, he hates _everything_ and his mind is weird and he can’t control his thoughts and everything about him just _feels_ wrong and Thor is gone and, _whoa, where did that come from on, stop it, you pathetic little fuckwit, Thor doesn’t care about you, why would you even waste a thought on him_ , _just focus_ , _why is it so hard_ _for you to just fucking focus?_ “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” Loki hears himself say, his voice still sounding an awful lot like The Voice. “I suppose it’s not your fault that the fates decided you should sound like a dying raccoon.” He feels his lips curl into a nasty smirk. “Again, no offense.”

The shrink’s face falls and the sight is exhilarating but even that is not enough. Loki suddenly feels the need to hurt him even more because cutting is the only thing that ever worked for him and now that guy is going to try to take it away from him and _who the hell do you think you are to even think of trying to take something that important away from me_ , _it might no longer really work but it still works better than anything else and_ _I’m not going let that happen_ , no, he needs to hurt that fucking little shrink with the screechy voice and the ridiculous name Dr. Darcy, maybe if he just clawed _his_ eyes out, he’d feel a little better, maybe he would—

“Loki!”

He snaps back to attention.

The shrink’s voice sounds muffled and a little far away. “Why did you do that just now?”

“Do what?” Loki asks. Well, technically he shouts because his own thoughts are far too loud and they won’t quieten down, they’re like roaring waves crashing against the walls inside his skull, swallowing up all outside noise, and _why can’t you just keep it together now that it **really** matters?_

The shrink nods towards Loki’s hands and he glances down. His heart gives a lurch. _Shit_. He scratched a quarter-sized spot on the back of his left hand open and he’s drawing blood. “I suppose you _are_ making me aggressive,” he replies, an edge of nervousness to his voice that he instantly despises. _Pull yourself together_. _He’s gonna tell Mom_ _about all of this_. _Just calm the fuck down_.

 _But there’s blood_.

 _Who the hell can calm the fuck down at the sight of blood_?

The shadow of a smile ghosts the shrink’s lips because that fuckhead knows damn well that Loki is lying and Loki wishes he could set something on fire, preferably himself. “Do you often use words like ‘disagreeable’?”

Loki tries to calm himself down. There isn’t any other option. He won’t come out on top if he doesn’t calm down. _Just breathe_. _Just relax_. _You got this_. _You can gain the upper hand_. _Just focus_. “Only to piss people off,” he manages in a tone so calm that it surprises even himself.

“Why would you want to piss people off?” the shrink asks and Loki realizes too late that he gave too much away. He as good as opened a doorway into his psyche with that reply and he can’t possibly hope to close it again no matter what he says next. _Damn_.

“Because people piss _me_ off all the time,” Loki settles on saying.

“Doing what?” asks the shrink.

Loki snorts a laugh. “Existing?”

“I see,” says the shrink, scribbling something onto his notepad. “What aspects of the human existence do you find particularly … disagreeable?”

Loki feels another wave of anger surge inside of his stomach in response to the subtle—or not so subtle—mockery. “My first impulse would be to say ‘stupidity’ but I suppose that’s not altogether fair because not all people are born with the same set of cognitive abilities, so ‘ignorance’ might be more accurate.”

The shrink makes an ‘oh-that’s-interesting’ kind of sound, scribbling some more.

“What?” Loki asks.

“I was just wondering if you ever noticed that you effortlessly switch from colloquial phrases like ‘piss me off’ and ‘you suck’ to eloquently worded assertions like ‘I find it rather disagreeable’ or ‘I suppose that’s not altogether fair’ in a matter of seconds, sometimes even within the same sentence?” he asks back, pen scraping against paper yet again.

 _Fuck you_.

“And that your voice changes whenever you do?”

And just like that Loki knows he’s busted. _Shit_ , _shit_ , _shit_. It’s all The Voice’s fault. Why does it have to be so fucking loud all the time now? Why does it have to come out through his mouth? It was supposed to remain an internal sort of thing and this isn’t right, _dammit_ , because if he doesn’t find a way to shut it up soon, he’ll probably lose what’s left of his goddamn mind and then everything will turn to shit. He can’t let it come to this. If he doesn’t keep his cool, the shrink will find out about The Voice and if he finds out, he’ll tell his Mom and if _she_ knew about The Voice, there’d no longer be any reason for her not to tell Thor—she’d probably no longer consider him legally sane and if that were the case, it wouldn’t matter if she kept his secrets, right?—and he can’t let it come to this because if Thor knew … No. He _won’t_ let it come to this. Dr. fucking Darcy won’t find out about The Voice.

“What are you saying?” Loki asks flatly, painfully swallowing all those pathetic emotions threatening to undermine his intellect and his communicative prowess.

* * *

Frigga is sitting on a leather couch in the waiting area outside the therapist’s office, trying to focus on the email communication with a particular obstinate client on her tablet, but she can’t seem to find the right words for a civilized reply because her mind is busy hoping that Loki won’t sabotage his appointment. Especially now that he seems to have withdrawn even deeper into himself than before. In her state of despair, she is inclined to blame his recent retreat almost entirely on Odin, who almost exploded into her face when she told him she’d take Loki out of school and then proceeded to “have a word” with him about his “attitude”. The indignities he hurled at his son are still ringing in her ear and he and Loki haven’t spoken since then without spitting venom at each other.

Even if Frigga isn’t a religious person, she prays to some nameless deity that Loki will talk to Dr. Darcy about his relationship with his father. After countless efforts, she no longer knows how to mediate between them because Odin doesn’t realize—or doesn’t _want to_ realize—that Loki’s state of mind isn’t a result of his attitude and Loki constantly over-intellectualizes his father’s lack of empathy concerning the subject of mental illness, interpreting it as a rejection of himself as a person. Frigga doesn’t even know any longer if their marriage is still worth the effort she’s put into it all those years to give her boys a father, but that is another matter. Divorce has occurred to her but Odin’s has grown so resentful that she fears he’ll take revenge upon her by revealing a secret that they should have told Loki long ago but that he is in no state of mind to learn at the moment. She pushes the disconcerting thought away and instead prays that he’ll also address the bullying, which he still won’t admit no matter how often she tried to ask him about it but which Thor somewhat confirmed when she finally got him on the phone a few days after Loki’s suspension, asking him if he heard from his little brother recently.

“Why?” Thor asked back.

“Because he’s cloistering himself away and I was hoping he might have—”

“Talked to _me_ about it?” Thor laughed. “Yeah, right, Mom. Are you stuck in 2017 or what?”

Frigga heard him fiddle around with some food wrappings. 2017. Was that the year things went awry between them? What happened in 2017? She racked her brain but nothing came to her, so she just exhaled a long sigh. “Has he … when was the last time you talked to him?”

“Why?” Thor asked again.

The answer came automatically, revealing to her a thought that had been lying dormant in her subconscious. “I think he misses you.”

“Yeah, right,” Thor repeated and the words came out as a snort. “Honestly, Mom, you’re being weird.” Then, something in his voice shifted in response to her strained silence because her eldest might not be as smart as Loki but he isn’t a fool either. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”

Frigga thought of her promise but then decided that it only covered Loki’s self-harm and therapy appointment because the idea of him being the target of bullies has kept her awake every single night since she saw that drawing and if Thor knew something about that, she must know. “Did you ever notice other students… bothering him during the time you spent together at Infinity High?” Usually, their age difference would have prevented them from going to High School together but thanks to Loki’s educational head start, they spent the 2016/2017 school year together.

 _2017_. _Did something happen at school while they were both there?_

Thor breathed out and she could almost see his jaw clench through the phone. “He was twelve when he came to Infinity, Mom. You must have known that they wouldn’t welcome some nerdy, skinny, little kid genius with open arms.”

“Thor, please,” she admonished him.

“What?” He actually sounded offended. “You act like you’re surprised. Of course people tried to bother him but I b—” He stopped himself with a harrumph. “I took care of them. I made sure they left him alone.”

 _Until you graduated and Loki went back to school alone after summer break two years ago_. _With no big brother to look out for him_.

“Why?” Thor asked again. “Did something happen?”

“I don’t know,” Frigga sighed in reply, Loki’s drawing almost coming to life in front of her mind’s eye, like the rough sketches of a comic turning into an animated cartoon on a TV screen. “He won’t tell me anything.”

“What can I say, Mom?” Thor asked, his tone carrying a faint trace of resentment. “If you’d tried a little harder to keep Dad from kicking me out, I’d still be there to keep an eye on him for you.”

That was the end of their conversation but Frigga suspected that Thor texted his brother afterwards because her youngest looked daggers at her the next morning and ever since then, he’s only exchanged the bare communicative necessities with her. Which is why Frigga is sitting on that leather couch now, a few feet from where Loki is having his first therapy session, hoping that he’ll confide in _someone_ and that, through some miracle, their family won’t fall apart.

* * *

“Oh, it’s altogether too early to say anything,” replies the shrink. “What about your father?”

 _He hates me_ _because_ _I’m a spoiled, ungrateful piece of filth_. “What about him?” Loki asks around the lump that suddenly forms in his throat. There’s no way he’s going to regain control over the conversation if the shrink forces him to talk about his Dad. _Think_. _Just think_.

“You were focusing on your mother’s, as you called it, misconception earlier,” the shrink elaborates. “What about your father? What do you think _he_ thinks?”

 _I know what he thinks because he told me that he’s sick and tired of my attitude and that he’ll kick me out on my pathetic ass if I don’t get my shit together_. And, dammit, his Dad’s voice had that subtle threatening undertone again that sounds very much like the noise that a rope makes when it begins to tear. A rope that’s the only thing holding you while you’re hanging from a cliff, the only thing preventing you from plummeting to your death. “He isn’t my biggest fan.”

The shrink’s face pinches up as he scribbles something else onto his notepad. “Why not?”

 _Breathe, just breathe_. _You can do this_. _You’re smarter than this wimp_. “I suppose I’m not quite what he expects from a son.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” the shrink asks, ballpoint at the ready.

“Well, I’m not exactly the walking embodiment of traditional masculinity,” Loki offers and the shrink’s lips twitch again, his pen hovering a few inches above his notepad. It was a hardly noticeable quirk but it was there and that’s all Loki needs because the man’s subtle reaction tells him that he might be able to sidetrack the shrink with all the stuff that usually makes the average fifty-plus-year-old white male living in an economically successful, postindustrial Western society very uncomfortable. And if he can achieve that, he’ll probably abandon The Voice issue and that prospect boosts his self-confidence in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible a minute ago. “The way I dress enrages him because he’s a bigot whose heart breaks a little more each time he’s forced to realize that his son is challenging the harmful normative ideologies relating to sexuality and gender he has cherished all his life.”

The shrink harrumphs, his posture suddenly slipping, his cheeks turning slightly pink. “Wow,” he mumbles. “Would you care to … elaborate on that?”

“I don’t think I have to,” Loki replies coolly. “As a therapist practicing in the twenty-first century, I’m sure you are well aware of the misconceptions about gender and sexuality upheld by those in power that are destroying so many people’s mental health these days. I mean, how could you even be remotely helpful to any LGBT patient if you didn’t?” He fabricates an innocent laugh. “Right?”

“I suppose so.” The shrink pauses once more and Loki can see that the guy is struggling to keep his wits together. _You got him_. “So, was that a … backwards way of telling me that you’re, um, gay?”

“What makes you think that this was what I was saying?” Loki feigns shocked amazement. “Why would you even consider my sexuality to be of any relevance?” He leans forward, watching the man like a hawk as the shrink squirms in his chair like a fucking fish on a fucking hook. _Delightful_. _So, so delightful_. “Unless of course, I _look_ gay to you, Doctor?”

The shrink clears his throat once more. “No, I—”

Loki flashes him a smirk. “What?”

The shrink’s lips open and close again. “Listen, I think we’re going off topic here. We were talking about your father and your mother warned me that you have the tendency to—”

“Argue people into the ground?” Loki flashes him another smirk that turns into an amused laugh even though a part of him rages at the thought that his Mom actually fucking cautioned the shrink in advance that he’d be difficult to handle. _She thinks you’re a handful_. _You always knew that this is what she **really** thinks, didn’t you?_ He dismisses the voice with the greatest of efforts. “This is nothing. You should see me at my best, Sir.”

The shrink glances at his notes to buy himself some more time.

“Does this topic make you uncomfortable?” Loki continues. “Because if it does and you very much give the impression that this is the case, I think we can terminate this,” he points from himself to the shrink and back to himself, “arrangement right here.”

The shrink doesn’t contradict him. _Fucking asshole_. “I guess that means I’ll see myself out, then?” Loki asks.

The shrink honestly looks dumbstruck as Loki rises to his feet and stretches out his hand. “It was nice to—oh wait, lying is bad, right?” He pulls his hand back, tells the shrink goodbye and leaves the room with the unsettling knowledge that, even though he vanquished the shrink in linguistic combat and deflected his attention from The Voice, Dr. fucking Darcy still witnessed him zone out and he’ll probably still tell his Mom what a goddamn freak he is for fucking drifting off and hurting himself in the company of someone else. _No self-control, absolutely none, you can’t even keep your shit together for one hour, you’re an absolute failure, fucking freak, your intelligence is fucking useless if you keep fucking up like that_.

Those goddamn voices.

Loki needs to identify the crevice of his psyche out of which they crawled and find the reason for why they did. There’s always a reason, _that’s basic psychology_ , _duh_ , and he’ll find it. He’ll find it by _himself_. He doesn’t need a shrink with a ridiculous name that can’t even keep his own face from blushing at the thought of one of his clients possibly being gay.

No, Loki’s going to take control of his life back before everything turns to shit.


	6. A crazy, little psycho

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why it took me so long to post this. I am currently working on chapter twelve of this story but I keep editing all the previous chapters in between because I'm never satisfied with anything. But this chapter has been sitting on my desktop long enough, so here it is. Seven will follow shortly; if people are still interested.

Frigga’s heart begins to sink when Loki stomps out of the therapist’s office after only twenty-five minutes, jaw as taut as a bowstring, jugular veins sticking out, his thin lips a pinched white line as he slams the door shut. “What happened?” Frigga exclaims, her voice conveying more of her exasperation than she intended. “You didn’t even use the full hour.”

“He’s an idiot is what happened,” Loki snaps, a glint of anger flashing in his green eyes.

This anger. This exuberant, untamable anger. She wishes she knew where it came from. “Loki, please,” Frigga sighs and the words tumble off her tongue before she realizes she has been thinking them. “Compared to you, ninety-five percent of the world population are idiots. Are you seriously going to establish genius level intelligence as a criterion for your future therapist?”

Thankfully, Loki unwinds a little in response to the compliment she just involuntarily paid him. There’s even the allusion of a smile that is gone again as quickly as it appeared, but what matters is that she saw it. “What if I am?”

“I suppose you’re going to give me a head full of gray hair,” Frigga tries.

Loki’s smile does not return. “He asked me if I was gay.”

Frigga’s heart sinks a little deeper. Not because she dreads the conversation about her son’s sexuality the same way she dreads the one about his birth; the one she has kicked down the road for far too long. To her, it never mattered whether Loki identified as gay, straight, bisexual or any other color of the rainbow and, since she never asked Thor if he was actually straight when he grew into a teenager and it became obvious that he was interested in girls, why would she feel the need to ask Loki if he was actually gay? Particularly considering the fact that he hasn’t expressed any romantic or sexual interests whatsoever so far? Homosexuality shouldn’t be framed as something extraordinary that one needs to draw attention to. Unfortunately, a lot of other people, including Odin, aren’t as open-minded as she tries to be and if Loki is indeed gay— _jocks like him always assume that people like me are goddamn faggots_ ; _you_ _insulted your teacher, calling him a homophobe—_ he might have suffered even more abuse in school and maybe elsewhere than she previously thought. And that is something that does need to be addressed. “Did he just ask you that point-blank or did it come up, as a topic?”

“I guess you could say it came up,” Loki admits, looking as innocent as a toddler when his huge green eyes meet hers. “But it made him uncomfortable and you can’t expect me to open up to someone like _that_.”

Frigga’s heart constricts at the plea in his tone. “I won’t,” she promises him before she exhales a breath and hands Loki the car keys. “But I’m going to have a few words with him. You can wait in the car if you want.”

Impossibly, his eyes open even wider. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I have to, honey,” Frigga replies even though the kicked puppy look in those huge green eyes almost makes her give in to his request. Almost makes her wrap her arm around his shoulder, walk him to the car and then take him for an ice cream sundae or a frozen yogurt as a reward for jumping over his own shadow and giving the doctor a chance. Not that he’d want ice cream. He’d probably ridicule her if she dared to suggest it. “That’s kind of my job as your mother,” Frigga forces herself to say before she turns around with an apologetic smile and knocks on the door of the therapist’s office, knowing that there is no chance in hell Loki will wait in the car. He’ll probably linger just outside the door, trying to listen in on their conversation.

“Please, Mrs. Fjörgyndottir, have a seat,” says the doctor when the door has clicked shut behind her, a pleasant smile on his face even though he appears to be slightly nervous. “Allow me to start with an apology. I possibly gave your son the wrong impression.”

There is something in his tone that doesn’t sit right with her. She generally gives health care professionals the benefit of the doubt, assuming they are, well, professional but she is also aware that there are a lot of exceptions and somehow, the man in front of her suddenly carries himself like an exception after sounding very pleasant on the phone earlier in the week when she told him about Loki’s suspension, his self-harm and his anger issues. She feels her body tense. “Do you have a problem with my son’s sexuality, doctor?” she asks probably a little sharper than would have been necessary.

“No,” Dr. Darcy replies instantly. “No, Ma’am. He caught me unawares with a sudden intellectual provocation that was overflowing with hostility and arrogance. Well, don’t get me wrong,” he hurries to add when he sees her eyes narrow, “I know these are psychological defense mechanisms and I am not treating them as character flaws or any other such thing but I’m afraid it will be near impossible for us to establish a therapeutic relationship with each other. He doesn’t trust me.”

Frigga’s tension eases a little. “He doesn’t trust anyone,” she admits softly. “Not even me or, perhaps, especially not me. I don’t know.”

The doctor slaps on a vexed smile. “You see, I could try to treat him but I fear it will be a waste of his time. Many professionals have a problem acknowledging that but sometimes you meet patients and you just know it’s not going to work because there’s no mutual trust, respect or understanding to build a therapeutic relationship. It’s the same for patients. I’m sure you met a new doctor in the past and just knew you weren’t a match. And that’s fine. Sometimes, the chemistry just isn’t there. You can’t get along with everyone.”

 _Especially not with Loki, who can’t seem to get along with anyone these days_. Frigga exhales a breath. She knows that he’s probably right but she also knows that this means she’ll have to start anew with her search for someone who might be able to help her son. “Is there anything you can tell me? I know you haven’t talked long but what is your impression?”

“He’s quite intelligent, quite eloquent, has a keen intellect and he prides himself on all of it to the point of being disrespectful. I assume he clings to his intelligence to balance out all the other negative emotions that he feels or doesn’t feel.”

Frigga’s ears perks up at the last part. “What do you mean?”

Dr. Darcy gives her another smile that he surely meant to be reassuring but, to her, looks a lot like the forebodingly empathetic smile doctors plaster on their faces before informing a patient they have terminal cancer. “I don’t think he has access to half of his emotions. And those emotions he does have access to appear to be quite disorganized. His intelligence is probably the only thing he can rely on; the only thing he can control.”

 _Disorganized_. _That’s as good an expression as any_. Frigga gives a nod.

“And there’s a huge gap between his intellectual maturity and his emotional maturity. In terms of intelligence, I’d say he’s at least five, if not ten years ahead of his biological age but in terms of impulse control, he’s still very much a child. That must be very frustrating, confusing, disrupting. It’s ultimately why many people self-harm as well,” Dr. Darcy explains and his words hurt as much as she expects a razor blade tearing her skin open to hurt. “They can’t access or control their internal pain, so they inflict external pain. Is he on any medication or drugs?”

The disjointed question startles her. “Not to my knowledge. Why?”

“I just want to make sure that his abrupt mood swings and sudden, rather intense rage reactions that you described to me and that I witnessed myself aren’t caused by a chemical imbalance.”

“I recently discovered that he’s drinking. I mean, I don’t know how often or how much but …” Her words trail off.

The doctor takes a note. “How often have you found him unresponsive?”

“Unresponsive?” Frigga echoes. “What do you mean by that?”

“That he zones out and doesn’t … react when you speak to him.”

“That never happened before,” Frigga begins and it takes a few seconds for the implication behind the man’s words to dawn on her. “Did that happen while you spoke?”

The doctor nods. “Stress and anxiety can worsen the symptoms of any mental illness, though, and I’m relatively sure coming here was a rather unpleasant experience for him.” He tries to appease her with another reassuring smile but again, it does the opposite. “Does he seem in any way different to you when his mood changes abruptly?”

“Except that the mood changes themselves are rather frightening sometimes? I don’t think so. I mean, there was this one time …” Frigga exhales a breath. “After he got suspended from school, he was so angry that … I mean, it’s probably nothing,” she prefaces her reply because what she is about to say suddenly sounds very foolish to her, “but his voice suddenly changed into this … this growl and he looked … different for a second. His face was … He just looked different to me in that short moment, as if someone else was looking at me through him, but then it was gone again and it never happened again. Not like this.”

“Do you remember what you talked about before that happened?”

“I think it was when I mentioned his older brother, Thor.” She mentally rewinds to that particular day. “Yes. I believe what he said was, ‘Leave Thor out of this’.”

“What can you tell me about their relationship?”

Frigga draws a sharp breath. “They used to be very close. Thor is about five years older and Loki looked up to him, admired him, tagged along after him all the time when they were kids. Thor was very protective and then, suddenly, they fell out about two years ago, I guess? Loki began to push him away and then Thor moved out a year ago and now their relationship is rather …hostile,” she settles on saying. “But neither of them will talk to me about it.”

“What about the relationship with his father?” the doctor continues. “He tensed up notably when I asked him about that.”

Frigga sighs a sigh of defeat. “They butt heads over everything lately, screaming at each other, slamming doors. My husband has quite a temper himself, so it can get … quite intense sometimes. Not violent, though. It’s not physical. It’s just … a lot of shouting and screaming and verbal …” She swallows. “Verbal abuse.” Tears well into her eyes before she can stop them. She tries to blink them away.

“Abuse.” Dr. Darcy gives an almost solemn nod. “I see.” Another pause, filling the air with almost palpable dread. “Mrs. Fjörgyndottir,” he begins and by his tone alone, she can tell that he is going to drop a conversational bomb into her lap, “I wasn’t going to say anything at first because I spent far too little time with Loki to make an educated guess about what’s going on. But from what you told me both earlier and just now, and from what I witnessed myself, I’d say your son is exhibiting some coping mechanisms that might be indicative of childhood trauma and I strongly advise you to follow up on that.”

“Childhood trauma?” Frigga repeats, all thoughts eluding her for moment. Something inside her stomach curls in response to the doctor’s presumption. “You mean, like, actual abuse?” As soon as the word has dissipated into the air, she feels the curled-up something inside her stomach starting to lurch about.

“I hope you didn’t truly mean to indicate that verbal abuse isn’t _actual_ abuse or that it is somehow less harmful than physical violence,” Dr. Darcy points out and Frigga’s cheeks and neck heat up as if she were a child called to the principal. However, before she has a chance to say anything to correct her poor choice of words, the doctor goes on to inform her that abuse can take many forms and that all of them are toxic for the development of a child. “Physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, even spiritual or religious abuse—all of that can cause severe trauma. The same goes for neglect, abandonment or unstable relationships with parents or guardians, divorces, custody battles, the death of a close relative, frequent changes of residence and so forth.”

As he speaks, the image of how she cradled Loki against her chest for the first time rushes into her mind. She can almost feel his cold skin against her fingertips and an invisible iron hand cups her heart, starting to squeeze. “Abandonment,” she echoes quietly. “How early can these… I mean … Would he … Could he be traumatized by experiences that he made as a newborn?”

“Of course. Even the birth process itself can be traumatizing under certain circumstances and cause disorganized or reactive attachment disorders in an infant.” Dr. Darcy’s gaze pierces hers. “Why?”

Suddenly, there doesn’t seem to be an atom of oxygen left in the room.

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir?” The doctor rises from his chair. “Are you alright?”

“I … uh …” Frigga clutches her chest, massaging her heart to compensate for the lack of air in her lungs. “Yes, I … just … Loki is … He’s had a rough start.” _What a grotesque understatement_.

“I see.” Dr. Darcy flicks a glance at his watch. “I’m afraid I’ll have to let you go soon but your son does need help, Ma’am. I know he and I got off on the wrong foot but, please, allow me to refer you to a colleague of mine. She has a lot more experience in this area and I’m sure she would like to meet your son.”

Frigga takes the business card he’s holding out to her, mumbles her thanks and leaves the room, her mind refusing to dwell on what exactly ‘this area’ refers to.

* * *

_Psychological explanation for hearing voices_.

It’s probably the dumbest and simultaneously the hardest Google search Loki has ever conducted in his entire life and his hands are sweaty as he types the words into the search bar. Sweaty and trembling the way they sometimes do when he’s cut a little too deep. He’s been putting it off ever since his Mom dropped him off at home with the usual string of apologies before going back to the firm. Instead, he’s been trying to soothe the terror Frigga’s distraught silence and paleness and uncharacteristically heavy breathing on their way back instilled in him with a blade, but he knows he has to face what’s happening inside his mind because if he doesn’t, he won’t come out on top. If he doesn’t learn to control himself, he’ll make a mess of his life and Thor and his Dad won’t ever think of him as anything else than a full-scale disappointment ever again. A crazy, little psycho. A fucking freak.

Loki stares at the words.

 _Hearing voices_.

Such a crazy thing to type, isn’t it, oh yes, those words are _so_ ugly, so emblematic of psychological dysfunction, _like_ _asylum_ , _that word is the **worst**_ , it’s so threatening; a disembodied, sneering menace that automatically infringes upon your sanity.

The first link informs Loki that there are a lot more reasons than he thought for why people might hear voices inside their heads, even ones that aren’t particularly alarming, such as high stress, lack of sleep, extreme hunger or recreational drug use. He heaves a sigh of relief— _it’s probably my fucked up sleeping schedule then, thank God_ —because the other causes that the website lists are either terribly far-fetched or feel like a blow to the gut. _You might hear voices when you suffer from mental health problems including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, anxiety or severe depression_. _You may start hearing voices after you experienced abuse or bullying or other traumatic experiences that may lead to PTSD or dissociative disorders_. All those nice conditions that are despised in the house he lives in because just imagine the publicity nightmare should any member of Odin Borson’s family be too weak and too pathetic to pull themselves together in the face of a little psychological distress. Just imagine his Dad having to learn that his own flesh and blood has been diagnosed with something like PTSD, anxiety, depression or, worst of the worst, psychosis— _that word is even worse than asylum_ , _psychosis_ , _the fuck_ , _that term literally screams legally insane_ —because that would be _an absolute tragedy_! Odin’s sons aren’t such pussies, are they? No, Odin’s sons are supposed to be strong.

Loki leans back in his chair, clasping his hands behind the back of his head.

The voices aren’t real. He knew it. They’re just a product of his fucked-up mind and that means he can make them go away. If he pulls himself together and makes them go away, nobody will find out what a freak he is. Hell, if that site says other people experience the same thing when they’re stressed or tired, that means he isn’t even that much of a freak, is he?

 _Everyone knows you’re a freak_.

“You aren’t real,” Loki whispers, a smile plucking at his lips. “I can make you go away.” The smile turns into a laugh. “You’ve had your fun but you aren’t real and you’ve got to go now. From now on, I’m not gonna talk to you anymore because I’m in control, okay? I am in control.”

 _Yeah, right_.

“I’m in control,” Loki repeats. His mind isn’t _that_ messed up. He can make them go away. He’s a little fucked up, yes, and he went wrong somewhere, that’s for sure, but he can still turn around and make them go away. “You don’t exist. You’re just a product of my imagination.”

 _And yet, you don’t stop talking to me_.

“Shut up!”

 _You pathetic little twerp can’t make me shut up_. _I’m right here_.

“No, you aren’t and you’ll be quiet now. You’ll shut up.”

“Who the hell are you talking to?”

Loki’s head snaps sideways, his stomach filling with ice at the sound of his Dad’s blusterous, rope-starting-to-tear voice. He has to force himself to hold his father’s unforgiving glare. “N-no one,” he tries but who the hell knows how long Odin’s been standing in the doorway and how much he heard and what does it matter anyway because chances are his Mom already told him that his son is going totally cuckoo and that there’s no hope for him. Out of nowhere, a ginormous wave of despair washes his glee away and tears spring to Loki’s eyes.

Odin’s expression remains unforgiving even when he sees the tears. No, Loki silently corrects himself. It remains unforgiving _because_ he sees the tears. “Your mother told me you ‘didn’t get along’ with your therapist too well but you and I both know that’s not the whole truth, right? You and I both know that you antagonized him on purpose.” He huffs a snarky laugh. “Why did you do that, huh? Was he beneath you like your teacher or do you just want to keep making life difficult for your mother?”

“No, I …” The tears choke Loki’s throat.

 _I’m still here_.

The tears spill out, running down his cheeks. _Go away_.

 _I won’t_. _Not until you acknowledge me_.

“Stop crying,” his Dad barks, “and tell me why you messed this up!”

Loki bites his lip to stop it from quivering. His Dad looks almost amused. “Why are you crying, huh? Are you feeling sorry for yourself?” His eyes narrow to slits. “Your mother is going out of her way to accommodate you despite all your drama and all your temper tantrums and you’re not even trying. No, Mister I’m-too-good-for-school just retreats into his room and wallows in self-pity because his life is _so horrible_. Why didn’t you talk to that man if your life is allegedly _so_ unbearable and your teachers are _so_ mean and you’re _so_ misunderstood and in _such distress_?”

His father’s acrimonious mockery hurts like hell, yes, but somehow it still doesn’t hurt as much as what comes from within, from this voice, not The Voice, the other one that says that his Dad is right _, isn’t he_ , _there’s no point, there’s no way to possibly help you, is there, no, you’ll never change, you’ll always be this wretched little pathetic piece of shit_ —

“Shut up,” Loki begs in a horrifyingly weepy voice before he can stop himself.

His Dad has crossed the room in less than a second and towers over him, poised in attack mode like the tiger in the drawing above his desk, arms akimbo. “What did you just say?” Odin blares, his voice booming like the horn of Helm Hammerhand Gimli blows in the second Lord of the Rings movie.

“I-I don’t …” Loki almost chokes on the words. _I wasn’t talking to you_. _Maybe I am a freak after all_ , _Dad_ , _I’m sorry_. “I’m sorry.”

Odin’s eyes are like windows into the smoldering pits of hellfire. “Tell. Me. What. Happened.”

Suddenly, inexplicably, Loki’s despair dissipates again. His tears run dry. The anger comes roaring back like a tidal wave. He swivels his desk chair to face his father, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “That’s none of your business.”

The fire in his father’s eyes begins to flare even brighter. “What was that?”

“Unless you’ve suddenly gone deaf, I’m sure you heard me.” Loki’s anger overwhelms him, blinding him to the consequences of fanning the flames of his Dad’s fury. “You’re a lawyer. I’m sure you’ve heard the term doctor-patient-confidentiality before.”

“You listen to me, son,” his Dad barks, grabbing his left arm, “I won’t—” The sudden pressure on his fresh wounds sends an excruciating flash of pain through Loki’s entire nervous system and he yelps, cutting Odin off mid-sentence. Surprise flashes across his Dad’s features and he lets go, looking at his hand.

 _Oh, no_.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. _No_. **_Oh please_ , **_**no!** _

There are smudges of blood on his Dad’s palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Entrance Odin. What do y'all think?
> 
> Oh, and I know that therapists aren't usually that quick with handing out opinions or even figuring out what might be going on but this is a story and I can't have Loki spending seven plus years in treatment/the health care system before anyone gets to to the bottom of things, even though that would be far more realistic. Plus, Frigga took Loki to a therapist when he was younger; which I forgot to mention before and re-edited into the previous chapters in one or two sentences. See? This is why I always take so long to post things *sighs*
> 
> Thanks for reading.


	7. A therapist he trusts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just edited this for like the sixteenth time and I can't find anything glaringly obvious bothering me anymore, so I might as well post it. Enjoy!

“What on Earth happened to you?!” Odin grabs Loki by the left wrist with his right hand, trying to pull up the sleeve with his left. The anger is still blazing white in his pale blue irises but there’s a glint of something other than fury, something Loki never saw in his Dad’s unforgiving eyes before. Fear. Shock.

“What’s going on up there?” Frigga yells from downstairs and, _oh thank God_ , she’ll rush upstairs to stop him, Loki just needs to buy himself some time because his Mom would never let his Dad do what he’s about to do, he just has to stop him until she arrives. Loki’s right hand shoots forward on impulse, closing around his father’s right wrist. “Don’t,” he pants. “Leave me _alone_!”

Odin forcefully yanks his hand back, freeing himself with ease, _please hurry_ , _Mom_ , and starts pulling up the sleeve again. Before he becomes consciously aware of what his mouth is planning to do, Loki lowers his head and bites into his father’s hand with the groan of an animal instinctively protecting itself against imminent violation. Odin rapidly frees himself once more and then, without warning, slaps him across the cheek. There’s a burning sting of pain _that feels so fucking good_ , _oh yes, it feels so much **better** than the cuts because it was unexpected_, his Dad’s never done this before, _of course he has_ , _don’t you remember_ , _what the hell are you talking about_ , _you know what, it doesn’t matter_ , what matters is that he’ll do it again if Loki provokes him again, no wait, he doesn’t even _need_ to provoke him again because his Dad is on a fucking roll and he slaps his cheek again, fueled by his anger and his shock and his fear, howling, “How _dare_ you bite me?”

“How dare _you_ touch me?” Loki screams back but instead of striking him again, Odin grabs the bottom hem of his shirt and starts wrenching it upwards.

“What are you doing? Stop it!” Yes, his Mom is standing in the doorway now but maybe she’s too late because his Dad is almost there and a rocket filled with tiny little panic particles explodes in Loki’s chest because _they’re going to see, if she doesn’t stop him, they’re going to see the wounds_ , _all of them_ , and suddenly, he can’t seem to breathe anymore, _where is all the air_ , _for fuck’s sake_ , _what the hell is happening_ , _why are his hands jerking to his father’s wrists, **Mom, please do something**!_ “No, no, no, _stop_ ,” he hears himself half-scream, half-whimper, or maybe it’s someone else, no it’s him, it’s _him_ , he’s Loki, no he’s not, he’s being pushed into the backseat of his own conscious mind and someone else starts fucking driving, screaming at his Dad who’s is in a fucking frenzy, his eyes alight with fury, _he really does look like Hannibal Lecter_ , _he really fucking does_ , and he pulls the shirt up towards Loki’s chin like a madman, yanking Loki’s arms up with it even as he squirms in Odin’s grip, trying to free himself.

“Odin, stop!” Frigga yells. She has crossed the room, tugging at her husband’s arm. “Leave him _alone_!”

Despite approaching sixty, his Dad is still fucking damn strong though and he spins around without letting go of Loki’s shirt, somehow shoving Frigga away with his other hand and she stumbles backwards and then the shirt comes off and then … there’s nothing.

Nothing but a whitish blankness.

* * *

_This can’t be happening_ , is all Frigga’s mind comes up with for a few agonizing seconds after she’s bolted up the stairs and made it to Loki’s bedroom. _None of this can be happening_. She had a vague idea of what the expression denial meant before this day but only now, as she has to watch her husband lay hands on their son not six hours after Dr. Darcy spoke of abuse, does she truly understand its meaning and the psychological necessity for its existence. _This must be a dream, a cruel twist of fate_.

 _This can’t be happening_.

But it is happening.

Which means that she needs to act.

Her legs automatically take her into the room to stop her husband even before the conscious part of her brain realizes that this is what she _should_ be doing and then she’s yelling at him, tugging at his arm, but Odin shoves her away, sending a sharp pain up her upper arm.

Loki stops resisting as soon as Odin exposes his naked torso. Recovering from her husband’s blow, she catches a glimpse of the barely healed wounds Loki inflicted upon his pale chest and the bottom drops out of her stomach. Odin is still towering over their son, shock apparently rendering him speechless and rooting him to the spot as well, Loki’s shirt gripped so firmly in his hands that his knuckles stand out white. Slowly, almost mechanically, Loki starts to wrap his arms around himself, hugging himself, protecting his body with his arms. Arms littered with freshly bleeding cuts and scabbing wounds overlaying old scars that give his skin an eerie three-year-old-having-gone-wild-with-red-crayons-on-a-canvas kind of look. Frigga hand flies upwards to cover her mouth and she hears herself gasp through the rush of blood pounding in her ears. For a second, she thinks she is going to either burst into tears or faint on the spot at the sight but then her protective instinct kicks in and transforms her shock into anger, propelling her to yank Loki’s shirt out of Odin’s hands with a scream. “How dare you treat your son like this? How dare you violate his—”

“Did you _know_ about this?” Odin barks as soon as he finds his own voice.

“I did.” Frigga exhales a trembling breath and holds his blazing gaze. “I never saw it with my own eyes but I knew he was doing it.”

Her husband’s eyes almost pop out of his head. “And you never thought to _tell_ me?”

“No,” Frigga replies, her voice growing in strength and volume as she realizes that she has to remain strong to defend her son. “And the way you’re reacting to it just now proves me right, doesn’t it?” Odin’s face reddens like a lobster in a cooking pot but, before he has a chance to reply, Frigga tells him to leave. “You’ve crossed a line and you’ll get out of here. Now!”

Eyes bulging, Odin starts to protest but she takes the shirt and, fueled by some inexplicable force, slaps him across the face with it. “Get out of my sight!”

Surprise washes over Odin’s features.

“Get out of here and calm yourself or you’ll regret it,” she repeats through clenched teeth and, miraculously, Odin turns away without further protest. She hears him tromp down the stairs, muttering expletives under his breath, but she doesn’t pay him any more attention. Instead, she turns around and holds the shirt out to Loki but her son doesn’t move, doesn’t look up. His gaze is unfocused. He just sits there, hugging himself, body shivering. That’s when she notices how much skinnier Loki looks without his shirt on. She knew he’d lost weight but his ribs are almost prominent enough to count.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Frigga whispers, dropping to her knees in front of him. “Loki?”

Frigga wonders if such instances of what the doctor called ‘zoning out’ happened before and his words only heightened her perception by drawing her attention towards it or if the fates went wild and decided to turn what the doctor said into reality. Not that she truly believes the latter could be the case; even if that means she’ll have to admit to having been even more distracted lately than she thought.

“Loki?” Frigga asks again, a lump forming in her throat. She puts the shirt on his desk and her hands on his legs, gently squeezing his thighs. “Hey, Loki.”

He doesn’t respond for at least another ten seconds and what he whispers eventually is very out of context. “It’s not the same.”

Alarm slams into her. “Not the same what?”

“They’re different. There’s more than one and they’re _all_ … different. I-I thought …”

Frigga reaches for his arms and squeezes them. When he doesn’t react, she shakes him as gently as she can, mindful of his wounds. “Loki please, what is going on? _Please_ , talk to me.” Against her will, her voice turns shrill. “Loki, _please_!”

He blinks and then snaps back to attention, laughing nervously. “You finally got the glimpse you wanted,” he mumbles when he’s composed himself, stretching out his arms. “And? What do you think? Is it as bad as you thought it’d be? Are you disgusted? Shocked?”

His tone. So brimful of hatred for himself. “Honey, I …” Words fail her because how could there possibly be any words powerful enough to make so much hatred and so much pain go away? “Please, don’t think that about yourself. You’re in pain and,” she cups his chin with her fingers, “there’s nothing about you that is disgusting. _Nothing_ , do you hear me? And nobody is going to think—”

“You can’t speak for everybody,” Loki cuts in and then reaches for the shirt on the desk, slipping it back on, covering the carnage he inflicted upon his own body. “And as my mother, you’re evolutionally programed not to reject me to keep your own species alive. Your opinion of me is rather partisan, don’t you think?”

 _Rather partisan_. How in God’s name is she ever supposed to reach her son and connect with him again when he talks like that to push her away? She looks at him in his black shirt, racking her brain for something to say, marveling at how easy it has been for him to cover up the evidence of his self-destructive impulses without anyone being the wiser for God knows how long. _How deviously deceptive appearances are_.

“So you _are_ quite shocked,” Loki observes. “I thought so.”

“Of course I am quite shocked,” Frigga admits, opting for raw honesty because there’s no other conversational strategy she can think of in the face of Loki’s defensive hostility. “You’d be shocked too if you saw with your own eyes that your child is doing something like this to themselves. As you said, I am your _mother_ , Loki. Seeing you suffer like that without knowing why or how to possibly help you ease your pain breaks my heart. Of course it does. It’d break your heart too if you were a parent.”

Loki draws a shaky breath.

“But I am not disgusted with what you did or how your skin looks. What I am disgusted with,” Frigga clarifies, “is your father’s behavior.” Her knees suddenly turn wobbly as the full significance of what the doctor told her sinks in. She has to lean against her son’s desk to steady herself. _He’s exhibiting some coping mechanisms that might be indicative of childhood trauma_. “Has he … ever done this before?”

“No,” Loki replies but the answer came far too quickly.

“You don’t have to protect him any more than you have to protect the bullies in your school,” Frigga urges him. “You know that, right?” 

He gives a half-shrug.

“He had no right to treat you like this. I’m begging you, Loki. Don’t tell yourself that this was nothing or that you deserved it,” Frigga pleads. “I heard you scream. He assaulted you, invaded your privacy. You …I saw that you were scared, horrified. You even … You retreated into your mind from the shock,” she whispers.

Loki shakes his head but the gesture seems almost involuntary.

“You didn’t respond to me for almost a minute,” Frigga continues. “You … you didn’t even make sense when you first started speaking.”

“So what?” Loki asks after another excruciating moment of silence. “News flash: I am a crazy ass weirdo freak. That’s why you sent me to therapy, remember?”

Again, Frigga finds herself at a loss for words and can only stammer her son’s name.

“I’d like to take a shower now, if that’s alright with you, Ma’am,” Loki says flatly. “I need to … clean up.”

Despite the fact that the horrific thought of her son having to tend to his wounds alone in a locked bathroom leaves her dizzy, Frigga knows she can’t possibly deny Loki a shower. She also knows that she won’t find anything to pierce his emotional defenses with no matter for how long they keep talking, so she just gives a defeated nod. “I’ll speak to your father.”

“As if that’ll make a difference,” Loki snorts as he pushes himself off his desk chair. “There’s only one thing I can do to appease this man’s temper.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna go back to school.”

Frigga’s jaw drops. “What?”

“My suspension ends on Friday.” Loki manages a weak smile as he walks past her. “I know you kinda tried to help but I’m gonna go back next week because dropping out of my senior year like some pathetic loser is only gonna make everything so much worse, okay?”

 _No, it’s not okay_. _How could it be?_

“Okay,” Frigga complies because next week is seven days away and who knows how many times Loki will change his opinion until then.

* * *

When Frigga comes back downstairs, she finds Odin sitting on a deck chair on the patio overlooking the large, palm-fenced backyard and the pool, absentmindedly swirling a glass of scotch in his hands. Winding down. Just as she told him to. Frigga harrumphs to announce her presence from inside, trying to smother her own anger at her husband’s outburst. He asks her how Loki is without meeting her gaze or even taking his eyes off his hands holding the glass, which does very little to aid in the smothering attempts. At the very least, she notices a faint trace of concern in his otherwise flat voice but he’ll have to do better than that. A lot better.

“What do _you_ think?” Frigga retorts. As she steps out through the open glass door, she hears the water being turned on in the bathroom upstairs. “Honestly, what’s gotten into you? How could you do that?”

He takes a sip of scotch. “I saw red.”

“That’s your excuse? You saw _red_?” Frigga yells as she positions herself in front of his chair, forcing him to look up at her. “You peeled him out of his goddamn shirt!”

“Don’t tell me you can’t understand why,” Odin mumbles without really meeting her gaze and, even more curiously, without making any move to stand up and meet her at eye level. “Don’t tell me you didn’t almost lose your goddamn mind when you saw those cuts!” Emotion creeps into his voice, leaving it uncharacteristically brittle. “Don’t try to tell me you’re not desperate! Don’t try to tell me your hand doesn’t itch to knock some goddamn sense back into that boy!”

Frigga swallows down the tears because she knows she has to remain the levelheaded one. “Of course I am desperate. But that’s no excuse to assault him.”

“I didn’t _assault_ him,” Odin defends himself. “It was just a box on the ear.”

“Oh, if it was _just a box on the ear_ ,” Frigga repeats in a mocking growl, “then I suppose everything’s fine?” She blows out a breath. _Keep a level head_. “So, you’ve done this before, I take it? Boxing his ear every now and then when you saw red?”

He keeps silent.

“Odin.”

“You know how he can be,” her husband tries but falls silent when his pale blue eyes meet her burning gaze. “A few times, yes,” he admits. “But he just makes it so damn near impossible to deal with him sometimes. You know that. You know how difficult—”

“To deal with him,” Frigga repeats. “Do you even hear yourself speak? He’s your _son_. Yes, I know he is rather what you love to call ‘difficult’ right now but that only means that he needs our love all the more. The only reason he pushes you away is because he wants proof that you’re going to stay no matter what. He even wants to go back to that school because he thinks he has something to prove to you to earn your love. And you’re just … dismissing him!”

“I’m not dismissing him just because my hand slipped, okay?” Odin replies. “Let’s not blow this whole thing out of proportion. I boxed Thor’s ear every now and then and he didn’t make a fuss about it. Neither did you. I very well recall that one time I slapped Thor in the face when he ruined my boat and you stood right there but what I don’t recall is you giving me a damn lecture about—”

“How’s this about Thor now?” Frigga cuts in, flabbergasted by the comparison. “He got drunk with his friends and broke the rules by taking the boat out. I didn’t ratify your actions back then because violence is wrong and despicable and never solves anything but, at the very least, I understood that you intended to punish him. Loki cut himself, Odin. He cuts himself because he’s in so much pain that he doesn’t know how to process it and you think punishing him for that with more pain will make him stop doing it? That’s _nowhere_ near the same thing.”

Odin begins pulling at his lip with his teeth.

“But now that we’re at it, let me make one thing very clear, okay? No matter what Loki or Thor ever did to upset you, your own sons do not deserve to be hit in the face by their father because you’re supposed to _protect_ them, not hurt them,” Frigga continues now that she finally got through to him. “And stop comparing them, for heaven’s sake. Loki isn’t ‘making a fuss’ and he doesn’t ‘need some sense knocked back into him’ just because he is more sensitive and doesn’t handle stress as well as Thor. That’s just who he is and you’ll have to give up on the idea that he’ll turn into someone else one day. Loki is Loki and Thor is Thor.”

There is a long silence before Odin heaves a deep sigh of regret mixed with frustration. “I told you whom he was going to turn into, remember? About sixteen years ago, I told you that this is exactly what was going to happen but, no, _you_ knew better.”

Her husband’s words suck all the air out of her lungs in an instant.

“What?” Odin snaps when he sees the terror on her face. “Just look where we are now. I know you meant well and I know that you gave it your best shot but you were still wrong about him not turning crazy. Why can’t you just admit that to yourself?”

“He’s not turning …” Her vision blurs at the edges. “Is that …the real reason you saw red?” Frigga asks, her voice nothing more than a shaky whisper.

He keeps silent, staring into his almost-empty glass of scotch.

“Because he’s turning into—”

“Don’t tell me you don’t see it,” Odin mutters absentmindedly, his eyes seemingly meeting hers but actually looking through her. “Every time I look at him, I see more of her in his face, his clothes, his goddamn make-up, his—”

“I know,” Frigga cuts in and, on a sudden impulse that she didn’t even feel coming, she takes the glass out of her husband’s hands and empties it. Odin narrows his eyes at her, rises to his feet and starts pacing. “Gosh, why does he have to wear make-up and grow his hair out like this and make himself look like a goddamn girl?”

“Maybe he identifies as one,” Frigga suggests and Odin’s face turns so white that she thinks he might faint. “Or he’s just doing it to provoke people, you most of all. Whatever the reason, you can’t let the resemblance cloud your judgement. He’s your _son_. _You_ are his father. You can’t take your frustration out on him. He needs you to be _his father_. You’ll have to start taking him and his pain seriously or else he’ll—”

“Take him seriously?” Odin echoes, his temper flaring again. “He has the emotional maturity of a five-year-old on some days. How are we supposed to take him seriously?”

“And that’s not dismissing him?” Frigga reprimands him, her voice thick with anger. “I mean it. We both made a choice—”

“No, you made that choice,” Odin reminds her, his tone carrying an unmistakable threat. “ _You_ made that choice, Frigga.”

“We should tell him,” she blurts out what’s been weighing on her mind ever since she left Dr. Darcy’s office earlier that day. “I think we need to tell him the truth.”

“Need to …” Odin’s facial features derail instantly. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Yes, I am. Loki deserves to know. Plus, his therapist said that he might have—”

“To hell with what that headshrinker said!” Odin cuts her off. “What is the truth possibly going to accomplish now?”

“I-I don’t know but I think—”

“Think what, Frigga, huh?” Odin demands. “Do you want that truth be the reason he drives that fucking blade in deep enough to kill himself?”

Terror surges through her, reducing her response to a shocked gasp.

“What?” Odin barks as he takes a step towards her. “Haven’t you thought about that? He’s so close to the edge that anything might push him over!” His face reddens again and his eyes bulge so suddenly that, for a moment, Frigga fears he’ll be going into cardiac arrest. “You can’t really think that this is a good idea!”

“Not immediately, of course,” she begins softly. “But if we find him a therapist that he trusts, I really think it could be beneficial to tell him. Maybe it helps resolve some deeply buried conflict or … trauma.”

 _Trauma_.

All day, the word has followed her like a criminal lurking in the shadows of an unlit alley, waiting for the perfect moment to knock her over the head with a baseball bat.

“A therapist he trusts, sure,” Odin snorts. “Mark my words, Frigga, learning the truth will destroy him but, hell, you didn’t listen to me sixteen years ago and you’re not going to listen to me now, are you? So why do I even bother?” With that, he turns around and stomps back towards the house, yelling, “When it comes to that boy, you do what you want anyway,” over his shoulder. “So do it. Do whatever the hell you want!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Odin has a f*cking temper, Loki is trying to defend himself instead of trusting in anyone's help and Frigga can't seem to get through to either one of them. How is this ever going to get better, you ask? Well, the universe has this crazy stupid ass law that says that things always have to get a lot worse before they can actually get slightly better. This fic is kinda like that. But I'm curious as to what you think about Odin (and, of course, everything else) after this chapter. 
> 
> See you soon! The next chapter is almost ready as well, so stay tuned :)
> 
> *exits the room quietly giggling in Loki whump*


	8. Dr. van Dyne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet Dr. Darcy's colleague and Loki doesn't seem to distrust her right away. Yay!

**_Friday, September 13 th, 2019_ **

****

**** **_16 days to the incident_ **

****

“Nobody goes to therapy on Friday the 13th,” Loki tries to tell his Mom for the hundredth time but she remains unperturbed by his pleas as she ushers him to the car. She’s determined as ever to help him, especially after the physical altercation ensuing between him and his Dad, nagging him about it almost on a daily basis, but her strength is beginning to dwindle. She looks tired and a lot older. Her eyes no longer sparkle like they used to and the skin around them is wrinkly. And whatever conversation they had after she stood up to his Dad in his room, it sure as hell wasn’t a fertilizer for their relationship. Loki is relatively sure they loved each other once but now he can’t even remember the last time he saw either of them brush a kiss against the other’s lips or even cheek. Hell, if not for the firm, they probably wouldn’t even _talk_ to each other anymore.

There’s something about his Dad that is different, too, Loki thinks as Frigga pulls out of their street. It’s not only that he lost his temper like he did the other day. He even came to his room to apologize for his outburst later that night, which would have been nice if not for the fact that his lexicon didn’t contain enough words to help him explain what exactly it was he was sorry about. It doesn’t matter much to Loki though, because, first of all, he knows that his Dad will always have it in for him because he’s such an unmanly wimp compared to his hulk of a brother whose body probably came without tear ducts and, second, there’s something more to Odin’s behavior; something Loki can’t really put his finger on. Maybe it’s the amount of time he currently spends at the firm. Asgardia has been Odin’s first priority ever since Loki can remember but, when he was younger, his Dad at least pretended to care for his family when he wasn’t hanging out in court or in meetings. They went on vacation during summer break or over Thanksgiving and Christmas. They went out for dinner on the weekends. They spent whole Sundays together, doing all sorts of lame ass family crap like watching Thor’s stupid football games, hanging out by the pool or playing childish board games. Hell, Odin even hugged them sometimes. Without someone forcing him to do so at gunpoint. Lately though, he spends almost all his time at Asgardia and it doesn’t seem to bother him that his family is breaking apart while he’s there. Since he doesn’t lift a finger to save his marriage, which is beyond dispute on the verge of falling apart, it’d be easy to assume he’s having an affair but now that Loki gives it more thought, Odin started to act weird even before he kicked Thor out. Loki didn’t really question this decision at the time—his Dad is very stubborn and very set in his ways sometimes—but now it seems very out of character to send his golden boy away just because Thor didn’t want to join the firm. Thor would have delivered a horrible performance in the courtroom and his Dad had to know this. Thor isn’t a lawyer. He’s a fucking golden retriever.

And apparently he’s been the glue holding the family together because after he left, everything just turned to absolute shit.

 _Stop idolizing him_. _He doesn’t give a shit about you and you know it_.

 _I’m not idolizing him_. _I’m thinking_. The Odin from two years ago would have been thrilled to see his son rise to fame and sweaty masculine glory on a college football field. He wouldn’t have kicked him out on his ass, no, he would have cheered him the fuck on.

 _Yes, you are_. _You fucking miss him_.

 _I don’t!_ Something happened … Something must have happened to his Dad … People don’t just turn into complete assholes over night without any reason.

 _Yes, you do_. _You’re thinking of him right now_ , _how he’s_ _standing in your doorframe in his ridiculous red jersey with that dumb smile on his face_ , _asking you how school was._

 _Shut up_.

 _Poor little Loki misses his big brother_.

 _I said shut up_.

 _He’s right_.

He?!?!

 _He doesn’t need Thor anymore_.

 _Yes, he does_. _Like a fucking baby_.

“Loki?”

What in the actual fuck.

“Loki!”

He snaps back into the present, feeling strangely caught in the act. Heat spreads across his cheeks and neck like dye dispersing in water. “What?”

Frigga’s eyes narrow in suspicion as she unbuckles her seatbelt. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Loki replies and tries his hardest to give her a sincere smile, which is everything but easy in the face of the realization that the voices are talking _with_ each other and that they’re fucking talking _about_ him. What in the actual freaking fuck?

Why does this always have to happen right before therapy?

 _High stress_ , _lack of sleep_. _Nothing to worry about_. _You’re not going crazy_. Y _ou made it through an entire week of school without a major breakdown_. _You’re just upset because you have to go to therapy again_. _Deep breaths_. _You got this_. _Everything will be fine_.

There comes a knock on the window. “Then why don’t you get out of the car?” Frigga asks from outside the passenger site.

 _Damn_.

The shrink Frigga picked this time practices from the ground floor of her family home in the neighborhood bordering theirs, which exudes the same uninviting stench of suburban wealth as their own. Loki feels the nerves in his body tense up when Frigga rings the doorbell. The shrink who opens the door in a semi-casual outfit consisting of black slacks, a beige blouse and long, once blonde, now mostly light gray hair tied in a loose ponytail doesn’t really look like a shrink at first glance, which, Loki decides, is a massive improvement. Her piercing blue eyes aren’t only intelligent but also affectionate and, most of all, very sincere and her smile appears to be genuine. She stretches out her hand, greeting first his Mom and then him, and her handshake is firm. “I’m Dr. Janet van Dyne,” she introduces herself and there’s something in her voice that puts Loki somewhat at ease. _So far so good, maybe this’ll work_. _Yeah_ , _right_. “It’s nice to meet you both. Please, come on in.”

“What do you mean both of us?” Loki asks when his Mom makes no move to turn around.

“I’d like to talk to both of you,” Dr. van Dyne explains. “You know, to get an idea of the family dynamics in this first session.”

Loki is about to protest but then it dawns on him that, if this goes as bad as the first appointment, he can prove to his Mom how offensive and stigmatizing the whole concept of therapy is and if he can achieve that, there’s at least a small chance she’ll leave him alone after today and that’ll be worth it. “Okay, so observation number one,” he says as he follows the two women into the house. “She didn’t tell me about this appointment being some sort of family therapy thing because she was probably convinced that I would refuse if I knew, which tells you that she—and everyone else, by the way—assumes that I just love to make things difficult by default.”

Next to him, Frigga heaves the first sigh and Loki decides he’s going to count them and have a shot for each and every one of them later.

“Observation number two: She probably asked my father to join us but he’s working two high profile cases at the moment and heaven forbid he takes sixty minutes out of his day to speak about how fucked-up his son is—”

“Language,” Frigga cuts in. _Two_.

“—and, by the way, therapy is overrated anyway,” Loki continues, impersonating his father. “It’s a waste of time. Depression and stuff like this, these aren’t real illnesses. Kids nowadays are too spoiled, too bored and have too much time on their hands, that’s all.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dr. van Dyne says with a smile as she leads them into her office. The room looks inviting enough with its two comfortably looking leather armchairs, its two gigantic indoor palm trees and its dark mahogany desk positioned in front of a large bookshelf undoubtedly meant to subconsciously convince any potential clients of her expertise. “But first things first,” she begins after they all sat down. “How can I help you?”

 _She seems nice enough, I give you that_. _Let’s test her_ , _shall we?_ “What makes you so sure that you can or that I even need help?”

When Loki sees her eyebrows hike up and senses Frigga’s suppressed sigh next to him, _three_ , he chooses an offensive tactic to put them off their stride, blurting out, “ _She_ wants me to stop cutting,” with a side-glare at his Mom. Unfortunately, blundering out the words for the first time in company without testing their sound first— _cutting, dammit, not harming myself or hurting myself or calming myself down, no, **cutting**_ —has the opposite effect. It puts _him_ off his stride because it’s very hard to distance himself from the sensation the sound of the word evokes. “But I don’t want to,” Loki continues, trying to keep his voice from turning too brittle and too weepy in the first five seconds of the session. “I know you’re gonna try to make me but I’m not gonna stop, okay? It’s my body and I can do what I want with it. As far as I recall, that’s my basic human right. You can’t force me to stop.”

Frigga’s face screws up in despair but the shrink smiles at him. “I respect that.”

 _Okay, this is a new and quite unforeseen development_. Loki tries to readjust and compose himself. “Then what’s the point of giving me therapy?”

“I could try to help you understand why you’re doing it,” the shrink offers.

“I know why I’m doing it,” Loki snaps even though that’s not entirely true. Sometimes, he does, like after he got suspended but other times … Other times, he wakes up in the morning with a towel wrapped around his arm and doesn’t even remember that he did it. This used to scare him but since he can blame it on the booze, it really isn’t that scary anymore. “It helps me focus.”

The shrink nods softly, compassionately. “So, you’re unfocused sometimes?”

 _All the fucking time_. Dammit, that woman seems nice enough, her tone is very pleasant and, as far as Loki can tell after so short a time, he does like her, so why not just play along for once? The worst that could happen is that he’ll actually feel better afterwards. _Be careful what you say to her, okay?_ “Yeah, I guess you could say I get rather … distracted sometimes.”

“By what?”

“By my thoughts, mostly.”

“What kind of thoughts?”

“All kinds of thoughts. Sometimes they’re just very … I guess you’d call them intrusive?” Loki shrugs. “They’re loud and they don’t stop.”

She nods and scribbles something onto her notepad. “Can you describe exactly what you mean by ‘loud’?”

“It’s like they are …” _People_.

 _No, don’t tell her that_. _You can’t tell her_. _You shut the hell up_.

 _But what if she can help me understand what the hell is going on inside my head?_ _What if she can help me make you go away?_

_I’m never gonna go away, why can’t you wrap your smart little head around that?_

The prospect of silence inside his mind is so compelling that he resists the internal demand and takes a sudden and very, very unexpected leap of faith that shocks him to the core. “Like they have … voices of their own, you know,” Loki admits quietly and even though he fiercely despises the vulnerability he revealed with this statement, finally ridding himself of the weight of his secret produces a relief that’s greater than the shame. “Like they’re different … people who talk. Inside my head. I know that sounds like some crazy psychotic—”

He flicks a glance at his Mom, who looks like she just took a whiff of rotten fish, and then at the shrink, who remains unruffled as she assures him that, nope, that doesn’t sound crazy at all. _Yeah, right_. “You’re saying they’re coming from inside?”

Loki nods.

The shrink writes something onto her notepad. “What are they saying?”

 _They tell me I’m a worthless, pathetic little freak_. _Well, one of them does_. The other one … He feels a sob welling up in the back of his throat and, suddenly, he longs for The Voice’s company because whenever it was there in the past, he never felt helpless, vulnerable or exposed.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it yet if you don’t want to.” The shrink pauses. “Have your thoughts always been that loud?”

“Not when I was younger.” Loki thinks back to the first time he heard The Voice speak. It was neither as articulate nor as obtrusive as it is now, just an indistinct murmur urging him to get revenge the day after he learned how cruel teenagers can really be if they’re bored and brimful of testosterone. “It started in High School. And they weren’t _that_ loud at first.”

“Did something change when you went to High School?” the shrink asks.

Loki shrugs.

“Honey, please,” Frigga urges him. “Tell her.”

Dr. van Dyne’s eyebrows hike up. “Tell me what?”

Loki feels the sob well up some more and frantically shakes his head, trying to suppress it, but it comes out in a gasp anyway. Tears spring to his eyes and he hastily wipes them away. He can’t talk about this. He can’t _think_ about this. He can’t think about how much it hurts to be so worthless and so despicable. He can’t think about how it feels to be … to be …

“His brother told me that the other students tried to bother him when they were still going to the same school,” he hears Frigga say as if her voice comes from the other side of a wall before he snaps back to attention, “and I found some drawings that—”

“Mom, stop,” Loki pleads, his voice shaky.

“It’s okay to talk about this,” Frigga goes on.

“Of course it’s okay to talk about it, Mrs. Fjörgyndottir, but right now you’re just stressing him out, can’t you see that?” Dr. van Dyne cautions and the look on his Mom’s face is one of pure abjection. “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, leave it be. We’ll have plenty of time to address the subject in the future whenever he feels ready and comfortable enough to talk about it.” She gives him an encouraging smile. “How do you feel about the voices?”

 _The shrink is too nice_. _Something is wrong here_. _This can’t be real_. He’s probably dreaming. He probably dozed off in the car and in just a minute, Frigga will wake him up and they’ll step into Dr. van Dyne’s office and she’ll be an ugly, spiteful bitch.

* * *

Loki’s shoulder slump. “I don’t really … I mean, they can be quite … offensive sometimes.” There is so much pain in her son’s softly spoken words that Frigga has to force her body to keep it together with every ounce of strength she has left. Which, after the past weeks, isn’t much and what little is left seems to be getting sucked into an invisible black hole ever since Loki mentioned the voices and she prays that he isn’t suffering from schizophrenia or any other psychotic disorder because if he does ... _I told you that this is exactly what was going to happen_.

“And they fall quiet when you cut?” Dr. van Dyne asks.

“They used to,” Loki whispers, “but now … they’re just …” There is a long pause before he continues. “To be honest, I’m not really sure what we’re doing here, Doctor. I don’t … want to be inside my own mind anymore but there’s no way out of it, no escape route that you can offer me out of myself, so what’s the point?”

The hopelessness of his statement is brutal. Frigga reaches out to comfort her son, trying to rub his shoulder, but he jerks away from her.

“There might be no way out of your mind, but maybe we can find a way into it, you know,” says Dr. van Dyne. “To help you understand the chaos inside your head and where it came from and how to manage it.”

Loki lowers his hands and glances up. “But in order for you to be able to do that, I’ll have to talk to you, I know.” He smiles and his expression smoothens. It’s a subtle change, hardly visible, but all of a sudden, he appears less troubled, less burdened. When he continues to speak after a long pause, his voice is softer and has an almost protective undertone. “Most of the time, they just call me names. The students, I mean. They call me freak. Faggot. Fag. Nerd. Bitch. Emo. Freak. Yeah, mostly freak.” He smiles again, a very detached smile, as if he’s no longer talking about himself. “It’s their favorite, I think. Sometimes, they push me in the hallway, empty my bag and steal my homework because most of them are too dumb to do it themselves, so I just started to make extra copies for some assignments. Sometimes, they follow me into the bathroom. They don’t like it when I use the men’s room because they claim I’m secretly a girl and they punish me for using it. I go during class sometimes but mostly I just try to hold it back until I am home. One time, a group of seniors locked me in the janitor’s closet and left me there but that was a long time ago.”

“When?” Frigga asks but she knows what his answer is going to be.

“Freshman year.”

The doctor shoots her a glance. “Why is that relevant?”

“Because his brother told me that he looked out for him during Loki’s first year in High School and I’m no longer sure if that is true because their relationship—”

“Don’t,” Loki cuts in softly and the doctor scribbles some more. “I told you to leave Thor out of this. It’s not his fault. He did look out for me. Most of the time, anyway.”

“But that time he didn’t?” Dr. van Dyne asks.

Loki shakes his head. “Which is fine. We had different schedules.”

“How did you get out?”

Loki shrugs. “I’m not sure. I don’t … really remember. I think the janitor opened the door at some point but I don’t know if … I’m not sure,” he repeats, his teeth pulling at his lower lip.

“That’s alright,” the doctor soothes him. “Take your time.”

“It was already dark when I went home,” Loki continues after a pause, “and I remember that I found that very weird because it just felt like five minutes. No, actually, I mean …” His lips quiver slightly. “I guess I just sort of blacked out after they put me in there and closed the door because it was so dark and I screamed and no one came but I don’t know if I’m imagining that or not. I have nightmares of this sometimes but all I remember for sure is them grabbing me and putting me there after the last period. So about three in the afternoon. And when I was home, it was dark.”

Frigga bites back the “Why-did-you-never-say-anything?” accusation that’s burning on the tip of her tongue because the last thing she wants is to stress him out even more when he’s already chin-deep in stress.

“Do you remember getting home?”

Loki looks defeated when he shakes his head and Frigga wonders what in God’s name happened that day that made her oblivious of the fact that her thirteen-year-old boy didn’t come home until after dark on a school day, probably in distress. The bloody firm, possibly. A meeting. A report. Someone in need of lift to or from the airport. A statement to the press. Maybe it was one of those days _she_ didn’t return home until well after dark.

 _Abandonment_. _Neglect_. _All of that can be the cause of trauma_.

She never worked as much as Odin but, once both of her sons hit puberty and went to High School, she persuaded herself they were old enough to keep themselves busy on some nights. Only some nights probably turned into many and now she’s faced with the realization that the bullying started years ago and she only just found out.

“Does that happen often that you have gaps in your memory or that you black out?” Dr. van Dyne asks.

“Not really, no.”

“Well, that isn’t true,” Frigga corrects him softly. “There was an incident about two weeks ago. His father,” she pauses because it still sickens her that Odin lost his temper in such a way even if she now knows why and he tried to make amends afterwards. She glances at Loki for confirmation but he doesn’t seem to mind her talking about that, somehow, it’s really just Thor he doesn’t want to talk about and Frigga can’t even begin to explain what that could mean. “He …got physical. H-he hit him in the face and he … took off his shirt so that he could see his cuts. I tried to stop him but he incapacitated me and while it happened, I think Loki blacked out for a moment. He just sat there, unfocused and unresponsive.”

“Do you remember that incident?” the therapist asks her son.

Loki nods. “It’s blurry, but yes.”

“How often does that happen that it gets physical?” Dr. van Dyne asks softly.

“It never happened before,” Loki lies.

“Loki, please,” Frigga urges him. “You can tell her the truth. I already know—”

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir, please,” Dr. van Dyne admonishes her once again just as Loki cuts in with, “Why don’t you believe me, Mom? What are you saying?” His voice has climbed at least a full octave and, just like that, her untamable instinct to make him better has ignited another firework of anger inside his chest. “That I’m blocking shit out? Ever since you talked to that other shrink and he put God knows what kind of bug into your ear, you suddenly think your own husband capable of abusing me? What kind of trip are you on? Or are you really that desperate to slam a label on what’s fucked up in my head? If you really thought it was true that Dad hit me, we wouldn’t still be living under his roof. You’re blowing this out of proportion, Mom, and you know it. I provoked him, he lost his shit, he apologized, that’s it. I’m not traumatized or anything, okay? A slap in the face or getting shoved around in school aren’t traumatic experiences.” He glances at the therapist for confirmation. “She thinks I could be traumatized. Tell her that she’s overreacting, please.”

Dr. van Dyne smiles. “With all due respect, Loki, anything can be a traumatic experience, especially if you don’t have an intact socioemotional support system to help you cope with it.”

“If socioemotional support system means family, mine was very intact when I was a child,” Loki snaps. Frigga can feel the anger seethe inside of him and she prays that the fragile trust that her son has been placing in that woman for the past minutes doesn’t shatter because of her mindless probing.

“Do you have vivid memories of your childhood?” Dr. van Dyne asks.

“Of course I do.” Loki’s eyes narrow. “What kind of question is that? Are you testing me?”

“Not at all,” the therapist assures him and Frigga doesn’t envy her for the mammoth task of having to regain Loki’s trust. “Can I go back to something you said earlier?”

“I suppose so.” Loki blows out a breath, jerking his head in Frigga’s direction. “But can she leave?”

Frigga’s mouth gapes open in shock but the therapist says, “Yes, of course.” Dr. van Dyne flashes her an apologetic smile, then flicks a glance at the door. “Please. You can wait in the living room. It’s around the corner to your right.”

Frigga leaves the office with a reluctant nod, her thoughts racing off in all kinds of directions. Needless to say, neither destination they arrive at is particularly pleasant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved Janet in the comics, the MCU and the Earth Mightiest Heroes series and I also really like Michelle Pfeiffer, so there you go, she's a shrink in this AU. Fun fact: When I was a kid, I thought she and Rene Russo were the same person. 
> 
> And I know some of y'all are waiting for Thor but he's not yet available, my apologies. But he'll eventually make it into the story. You know me. I couldn't ever write Loki without Thor. 
> 
> See ya :)


	9. Everyone can experience trauma

“You’re not really thinking I could have experienced some trauma, right?” Loki asks as soon as the door clicks shut behind his Mom.

“Everyone can experience trauma,” the shrink replies. “It’s human. Look, you probably know that your mother talked to me on the phone prior to this meeting and many things that she mentioned to me and that you spoke of earlier might be signs of post-traumatic stress. I’m not saying that they are but they could be. I suggest we both keep an open mind, okay?”

“What signs?” Loki asks defiantly because there’s no way in hell he is exhibiting any signs of trauma and whatever she’s gonna say, it’s gonna reassure him that he isn’t _traumatized_. By what, for fuck’s sake? His childhood wasn’t a nightmare. He never experienced any panic attack sorts of flashbacks or—

“Nightmares,” begins the shrink. “Night terrors. Feeling constantly tense or on edge. Getting angry out of nowhere, nervous. A lack of self-worth. Negative thoughts. Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy. Difficulties sleeping. Loss of appetite. Detachment. Self-harm. Addictive behaviors.”

Loki’s head begins to shake of its own accord. _No, this is too much_. _This is all too fucking much_. His nerves are stretched so tight that it feels as if his body is going to rupture at any moment and he is torn between emotions that are so strong and so controversial that it seems almost impossible that they’re all coming from inside of him. He is angry because the shrink implied his Mom could be right. He wants to cry because, dammit, _that fucking voice is right_ , he really misses his brother and the thought of Thor not being there when he comes home later is suddenly almost unbearable even though he doesn’t want Thor there either because if he were, he’d know. He despises himself because he’s so vulnerable that he needs somebody else to help him straighten out his own fucking mind but, at the same time, he feels a tiny spark of hope that the shrink can maybe help him after all if she’s _that_ nice, even if that means he’s as pathetic as he always suspected. He is devastated because of what his Dad did to him the other day, because it still scares him, despite the apology, well, the idea scares him because …

“I don’t really remember that day, to be honest,” Loki concedes, breaking the silence that has crept into the room. “Not all of it. I remember him coming into my room and yelling at me and trying to ... And then I bit him but it didn’t really feel like”— _Stop talking to her!_ —“ _me_ biting him… I mean, I don’t know … Sometimes”— _I said shut up!_ —“it happens that I …”

He loses focus. His vision blurs. The room begins to flicker like an old CCTV recording.

 _Not **again**_.

Loki squeezes his eyes shut, massaging his closed lids with his fingers.

Dr. van Dyne asks if he’s okay but her voice reaches his ears as if through thick layers of bubble wrap.

 _No, not at all_ , holy fucking shit, it’s happening again, he’s almost losing his consciousness to someone else again, okay, what is it with that weird crap, _I thought this was a one-time thing because Dad lost it_. But apparently, it wasn’t, _hey_ , _hold on_ , _no_ , _no_ , _don’t_ , _what the fuck_ , _let me talk to her_ , _please_ , _let **me** talk to her_, _you already told her about the bullying that no one was ever supposed to know about_ _and even mentioned that janitor closet thing that was nothing more than a fucking nightmare, so let me keep going_. _You did enough damage, just shut the fuck up, you fucking son of a bitch_.

 _That wasn’t me_.

 ** _Get the fuck out_**.

Loki pushes the voice— _voices?_ —away with all the cognitive power he can muster. For a brief moment, he’s scared that there are actual people living inside of him and that those people just detonated a bomb inside his brain as some kind of punishment for his disobedience, but then he realizes it’s just a killer headache.

“What’s the matter?” Dr. van Dyne asks. “What’s happening?”

“I’m … I almost whited out.”

“Whited out?” Dr. van Dyne repeats. “What does that mean?”

“It’s like when you faint and everything goes dark but it doesn’t go dark,” Loki explains, hurrying to get the words out before someone stops him. “It goes kinda white. That’s exactly what happened when my Dad started to pull up my shirt and I knew my parents were gonna see my wounds and I guess that was just too much … It was like … almost like …”

“Someone took over for you?” Dr. van Dyne offers.

Loki’s jaw drops in response to the accuracy of her words. “Y-yes. For like a few minutes.” He pauses. “I think. The next thing I know, my Dad’s gone and my Mom’s kneeling down beside me. But then, a few nights later, I dreamed that my Mom hit my Dad with my shirt and told him to leave my room and that had a weird feel to it, like it really happened but I only kind of remembered later in a dream, I guess? Does that even make sense?”

The shrink nods and writes something down. “Do you really have no recollection of him ever hitting you before? Or did you just say that because your mother was there? Is that why you wanted her to leave?”

“This one voice,” Loki concedes in a whisper barely more substantial than a breath, whispering as if he could actually hide the words he speaks out loud from his own brain, “it says it happened before but I don’t … But if the voices are just my imagination, then why would I tell myself that?” His mind latches onto the puzzle and his voice gains force again. “Why would I persuade myself that something, which I don’t remember and which likely never happened in reality _because_ I don’t remember it happen, happened anyway? I mean, I don’t need to pretend to be a victim of abuse to get some attention or shit like this. My Mom is onto me like a hawk as it is. I don’t need her to think my Dad actually beats me. He never did. I wouldn’t make shit like this up to myself. There’d be nothing in it for me except more … surveillance.”

“Okay, let’s break this down, shall we?” Dr. van Dyne asks with a smile.

Loki hears the faint giggle that slips from his mouth and, _holy shit_ , this is the first time in weeks or maybe even months that someone genuinely made him smile. “Alright.”

“First of all, the things you said. You accused your mother of thinking her own husband capable of abusing you. You said you don’t want her to think he actually beats you, that you don’t need to pretend to be a victim of abuse, correct?”

Loki knows she is testing him but for some reason, he doesn’t mind being tested by this woman. Not anymore. “Yes?”

“Can I ask what abuse means to you?”

Loki shrugs. “Sexual assault, domestic violence, child molestation, forced prostitution, emotional manipulation, that sort of thing.”

“How about undressing a person against their will and hitting them in the face?”

“That’s not abuse if it’s a one-time thing,” Loki objects. “And my Dad didn’t _undress_ me. He wanted to see where the blood came from. That’s different. You make it sound like some weird sexual assault thing. It was a power thing. Okay, sexual assault is ultimately a power thing too but …” He tries to sort out his thoughts. “Look, I know how I sound like right now.”

“And how is that?”

“As if I’m downplaying what happened because I’m protecting him or something but it’s not like that. I’m not covering for him. He’s not _that_ type of person. I mean, yes, he’s turned into a horrible Dad. He’s never there anymore and when he is, he acts like an absolute dick and he gets angry pretty easily and, yes, he doesn’t really like how I turned out, but he isn’t one of those Dads that beat up their kids.” He becomes aware of the urgency in his own voice and tries to calm himself down. _Deep breaths_ , _deep breaths_. _You’ll make a fool of yourself if you don’t calm down_.

The shrink keeps silent for a while.

“What?” Loki asks. Overwhelmed by a sudden restlessness, he sits up straight. “What are you thinking?”

“You said that it isn’t like that. Well, I think we don’t yet know what it’s like,” Dr. van Dyne replies softly, “or who is right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You or the other voice.”

“But that other voice _is_ me,” Loki protests. “It’s just in my head, a figment of my brain. I’m making this all up. It’s probably something I suppressed, right? Isn’t that what Freud said about the psyche? That children banish shit into our subconscious that might come bursting out later to overwhelm them when they’re triggered?”

“Something like that, yes,” Dr. van Dyne says with an appreciative smile. Loki really likes her smile. “Did you actually read Freud?”

Loki shrugs. “One of my teachers mentioned his model of the psyche in school in, like, one sentence and I did some research after that.”

“That’s quite impressive at your age,” the shrink tells him and, quite surprisingly, it doesn’t feel like an insult. “What would you say that means, though? If something comes from your own subconscious, your own head, are you making it up or not?”

“That’s what I go crazy thinking about,” Loki admits.

“And it’s very curious, isn’t it?” asks the shrink. “The phrase ‘in your head’ is equivocal in the English language and only one of its two interpretations implies that you’re making things up.”

“So what?” Loki straightens even more. “You’re saying that the alternative is that the voices are … _actually_ in my head?”

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘When you hear hoofs, think horse, not zebra’ before?”

“Of course,” Loki replies, playing along. “The most logical explanation inferred from circumstantial evidence is usually the correct one.”

“And what’d be the most logical explanation if something feels real?”

“That it _is_ real?” Loki asks. _She makes it sound so fucking simple_. “I-I don’t get it. How would that be possible? There can’t be _actual_ voices inside my head, right? I mean, I would have to have more than one brain for that to be possible. That would be like …” His thoughts hit a mental roadblock.

“Have you ever heard of dissociation before?”

Loki nods, hesitantly. “I mean, I’m not sure, but I think it’s when the brain just sort of detaches itself from what’s happening to you if it’s extremely unpleasant or threatening. Like, what mine did when my Dad came onto me, I guess?” _You may start hearing voices after you experienced abuse or bullying or other traumatic experiences that may lead to PTSD or dissociative disorders_. “Shit, is that why I don’t remember? Because I just kinda … spaced out?”

“I think that is possible, yes,” says Dr. van Dyne.

 _Boom_.

Suddenly, Loki’s brain stops functioning, everything turning white for another moment or a few minutes or however long it takes. When his mind unwhitens again, the shrink is still sitting there, looking at him, her face a mask of concern. “I think that’s quite enough for one day, isn’t it?” Dr. van Dyne asks.

Loki just shrugs because he’s too embarrassed to speak.

“I don’t mean to overwhelm you but I want you to try something, okay?”

He gives a vague nod.

“When those voices talk to you again, try not to dismiss them. Try to treat them as if they were real and when we meet next time, you can tell me if that made a difference.”

Loki nods again even though the idea of actually doing that is ridiculous _and_ terrifies the crap out of him.

“I’m going to get your Mom.”

* * *

Frigga is on her feet, restlessly pacing the length of the therapist’s living room, her thoughts circling around her tempestuous, obstinate husband, the secret they’ve kept from their son, the coldness that keeps seeping into their marriage, the fact that Loki spent another week in that school after everything she just learned and Loki’s revelation that he is hearing voices. This last thought is, quite undeniably, what unnerves her the most. She knew there was something going on, she knew that her son was in pain, but she would never have imagined, not in a million years, that he was hallucinating or something like that when she picked up the phone to call Dr. Darcy’s colleague with the greater experience in ‘this area’. _My thoughts are like different people who talk inside my head_. Despite her uncountable vows to always keep an open mind, this new insight put her into a state of discomforting alarm out of which she can’t seem to free herself. Odin will undoubtedly use that knowledge to rub in her face how he was right and she was wrong about genetics condemning Loki to insanity all those years ago. Yet, even if that is an unpleasant conversation she’ll have to deal with _if_ she decides to tell him about it at all, it’s not what worries her the most. What worries her the most is all the stigmatization, humiliation and vilification that her son will heap on himself should he receive a diagnosis that confirms—

Dr. van Dyne harrumphs, pulling her out of her disquieted mind, instilling in her a mixture of relief and dread.

“How did it go? Is he okay?” Frigga brings herself to ask as she tries to stifle her unrest.

“I think it went rather well. Your son is quite clever.”

Despite her concern, the observation makes Frigga smile. “He is.” She draws a breath to calm herself, trying to catch a glimpse of the door to the therapist’s office, whereupon the other woman assures her that it’s closed. “Look, I’m sorry that I pushed him like this but I just don’t understand why he’s lying about his father.”

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir, what makes you so sure he is lying?”

“Because my husband told me the truth when I confronted him,” Frigga replies. “He confirmed that he hit both of my sons before but Loki won’t admit it and I’m driving myself crazy thinking about why.”

“Why don’t you just take him at his word?”

“That he doesn’t … remember?” Frigga asks, a sensation of dread nestling back into her stomach. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Well, that’s what we’re here to find out, aren’t we?” The therapist gives her smile so reassuring that it somehow manages to erase the past minutes of apprehension. “I have a spot opening up in the first week of October. Wednesdays at two p.m. If you and Loki agree.”

“Yes of course. I would be very grateful.”

“If possible, I want you to do a physical check-up in the meantime to rule out any brain injuries or other physical causes. You’re probably not going to get an appointment that fast but I’d like you to apply for one as soon as possible.”

“Brain injuries?” Frigga’s mouth gapes open. “Is it that … bad?”

“I just want to make sure that everything else is in order before we start working on the psychological.”

“We had his brain checked out when he was a baby and once again later when he was a child because,” Frigga begins, not knowing how to say it but then just blurting it out in a whisper when the other woman raises an eyebrow at her because she seems trustworthy enough. “Because I … I wasn’t the one to give birth to him and my husband and I suspected that his biological mother was abusing drugs while she was pregnant but everything turned out fine. The tests were all fine and he … I mean, he’s _so_ smart.”

“These two things aren’t necessarily interrelated, I’m afraid. Intelligence is a stable trait that includes many aspects of cognitive functioning, some of which may remain entirely unaffected by physical trauma. Plus, there could be recent damage you don’t know about,” Dr. van Dyne points out.

 _Recent damage caused by people pushing him around in that hellhole of a High School_.

“I really don’t think there is but I’d like to be on the safe side,” the other woman emphasizes before she returns to Frigga’s revelation. “He doesn’t know he’s adopted, I take it?”

Frigga shakes her head. “It never … I mean … Maybe that’s a story for another time but when your colleague told me that he might have suffered some trauma during childbirth, it just occurred to me that … I mean I …” The words are all there but they elude her tongue, making her feel like a stupid schoolgirl that freezes in a middle of a presentation she has to give to the class despite knowing the content by heart.

“Why are you only telling me this now?” Dr. van Dyne’s face turns into a grimace of suspicion. “Don’t you think this might have been useful information for me?”

“Possibly,” Frigga concedes in an attempt to gather her wits back together, “but, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure he was even going to talk to you and I didn’t feel comfortable revealing such intimate details about him if you weren’t ever going to see him again but now that I’ve met you, I have confidence in you. And it seemed to me that he does too, which is really rare, so I guess I … I don’t know … I just felt …”

“It’s alright,” the therapist rescues her, slowly leading her back to the office. “That’s a valid reason. Why don’t you just email me the whole story? Take your time to write down everything you think could be relevant and send it to me by the end of September so that I’ll have enough time to go through it before I see him again. I’ll give you my card.”

“Dr. Darcy already gave me your card but … Thank you. This means a lot to me.” The interest the other woman is showing in Loki even though she just met him a little over an hour ago touches Frigga’s heart so deeply that she can almost feel the warmth of gratitude spread through her chest. Finally, there is someone who doesn’t reject her son or write him off entirely because he’s ‘different’ or ‘difficult’. Finally, there is someone who doesn’t judge him. Finally, there is someone who truly wants to help. She tries to compose herself when she realizes that Dr. van Dyne’s hand is already on the door handle. “Just one more thing,” she says in a low voice. “I know that probably sounds awful but is there any chance you considered prescribing him some medication?”

Dr. van Dyne gives her a stare that articulates perfectly well just _how_ awful that question sounded.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want him pumped full of drugs,” Frigga backpedals. “It’s the last thing I want, believe me. It’s just that I’d rest a little easier if I knew there was something I could give him if he got himself too worked up. Just so he can sleep or at least relax a little.”

“I’m hesitant to do so before I’ve made a diagnosis,” the therapist replies. “Not only are there are some mental disorders that can’t be treated with medication but from what you’ve told me, Loki is already using alcohol to escape from his own thoughts. What do you think he’d do with medication?

“I suppose you’re right,” Frigga concedes. “It’s just … It’s hard to see him so overwhelmed sometimes.”

“I understand that but I’d advise you to try out some sedative herbs before resorting to anything chemical,” Dr. van Dyne says. “Sometimes, those help and I’d like to spend more time with him before I determine if he needs anti-anxiety medication or anti-depressants or whatever else you had in mind.”

“Of course,” Frigga agrees and despite the pang of disappointment she feels, the therapist’s words assure her that she’s a professional who wouldn’t mindlessly resort to pills in order to help Loki cope with his distress and that means her son will be in good hands. And, ultimately, that’s all that matters.

Dr. van Dyne nods and opens the door. Loki is still sitting in his chair with his eyes closed and his head resting on the back.

“Loki?” Frigga asks softly.

He opens his eyes and sits up, a shy smile on his lips.

“You can come back on the second of October if you like,” Dr. van Dyne tells him.

Loki nods and stands up, looking incredibly exhausted. “I think so.”

The therapist retrieves two business cards from her desk and hands one to each of them, just in case. “If there’s any emergency in the meantime, don’t hesitate to call me.”

Frigga gives a nod and then glances at the card that identifies the other woman as a member of the National Association of Trauma and Dissociation, which is simultaneously reassuring and very, very disconcerting.

“Thank you,” Loki whispers and, for the first time in weeks or maybe even months, Frigga senses that her son is at least vaguely at ease. _Maybe_ , she allows herself to hope, _maybe things will finally take a turn for the better now_.

“And remember your homework,” Dr. van Dyne says with a wink as they walk out of her office.

* * *

“I’m sorry I made you leave,” Loki mumbles when they are back on the road, his eyes fixed on something outside the passenger seat window.

“It’s alright.”

Loki huffs a quiet laugh. “No, it’s not. Because you still think it’s because of Dad. You still think I’m lying.”

“Not anymore,” Frigga replies.

Loki cocks his left eyebrow and she wonders not for the first time how he manages to control one side of his face independently of the other. “How come?”

“There’s always more than one side to a story,” Frigga settles on saying. “Yes, I thought you were lying because your father admitted that he did it before but if you don’t remember it, you’re not lying when you say it never happened.”

That throws him off for a second but then he simply proceeds, ignoring her remark altogether. “The real reason I wanted you to leave was because I saw the look on your face when I mentioned the voices.”

Dread creeps up on her.

“I saw it in your eyes, Mom. You think I’m crazy.”

She draws a deep breath. “No, honey. I think you’re very stressed out.”

“Yeah but what if I’m not just stressed out?” Loki asks, finally looking at her, his eyes like huge, green-glassed windows into a bottomless pool of longing. “What if I … really hear them?”

Frigga gulps. “What do you mean?”

“What if they’re … real?” Loki asks so softly that she isn’t sure he has actually spoken. She takes her eyes off the road to look at him burrowing into the passenger seat, looking no less fragile and no less vulnerable than a small child. “What then?”

Even though Frigga is convinced that the voices can’t possibly be _real_ —how could they be real, that’s _impossible_ , no, no, his mind will calm down as soon as he gets a little better and understands why he is hurting and then they’ll go away on their own—she can sense that whatever she says next is of vital importance for the future of their relationship. “If they’re real, I’ll do everything in my power to help you learn to live with them.”

Loki’s body visibly relaxes and he actually rewards her with the first genuine smile she’s seen on his lips in a very long time. “Thank you, Mom.”

 _Yes_ , Frigga thinks. _We will get through this_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another fun fact: When I first came up with the idea for this fic, I never even thought of writing parts from Frigga's perspective (as I usually only feel comfortable to put myself in either Thor's or Loki's shoes) but now that I started actually writing it, I couldn't imagine not writing from her POV as well. And sure, she certainly isn't Wonder Mom but I really love exploring how love can make you impatient and desperate and cause you to overreact in certain ways with her character. Again, I'm not a Mom, I'm only hypothesizing here, so any criticism is welcome xoxo


	10. School is a bad idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is having another breakdown and Frigga is kicking some ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frigga thought everything would turn out to be alright now but we all know that seeing a light at the end of the tunnel doesn't mean you've made it through the whole tunnel, right?

**_Thursday, September 19 th, 2019_ **

**_  
10 days to the incident_ **

  
“Mr. Odinson.”

Loki’s head snaps up from the page onto the edges of which he’s been doodling for however long it took Erik Stevens to solve the projectile motion problem on the board. “Yes?” he asks meekly, dread settling in the pit of his stomach as he tries to cover up the dancing skeletons in black tuxes he’s scribbled next to his own solution of the equation. Everything’s been going so well. Okay, maybe not _well_ , that’s a bit of a stretch, right, but overall, he has felt a little better since he met Dr. van Dyne because there now seems to be a lifebelt floating somewhere in the tumultuous sea of his thoughts that he can swim towards if he’ll actually start to drown in his own mind. He even tried her advice and, as she probably knew, that particularly hostile voice wasn’t as hostile as before and didn’t insult him that much anymore when he didn’t offend it by saying it wasn’t real. He even asked it what its name was that one time he was drunk enough to overlook the fact that his life turned into a complete freak show, and it replied that its name was Nikias. And just like that, the voice stopped being this crazy disembodied snarl from the backstage of his own consciousness that he’d been trying to fight every second of every day and became someone whose presence isn’t that unbearable anymore. Hell, even his Dad calmed down a little after he chose to go back to school, _so please don’t ruin this_ , _please_ , _I’m begging you_ , _I’m not gonna be difficult_ , _I promise_.

“Take a look at the board,” says Mr. Brown, his advanced physics teacher.

 _Oh, please no_. Loki has been trying to lay low and not upset people by rubbing his intelligence in their faces as he used to before the incident with Mr. Stokes. It’s been almost two weeks and he actually allowed himself to hope that he could pull off the rest of his senior year without drawing attention to himself in class at least. But now Erik Stevens screwed up the equation in front of everyone and someone will have to fix it.

“Can you correct this equation for us?” Mr. Brown looks at him expectantly, a whiteboard marker between his thumb and index finger. That fucking whiteboard marker. Even if that is total bogus, the stupid marker feels like some sort of symbol of his fucked-up-ness that led to his suspension last time or like an omen warning him that, if he takes it, another calamity will follow. He looks at Erik, who glares at him. _Look at that fucktard_. _How could he not figure this out_? _How could he forget gravity_?

 _Stop being hostile, please_.

 _Stop being soft_.

“Mr. Odinson! Are you still with us?”

Loki coughs. “No, sir. I mean, yes, but I can’t. I … I haven’t figured it out myself.”

“Really?” Mr. Brown asks as he stalks up on his desk. _Oh please_ , g _o away_. _Just leave me alone_. “Let me see.” He picks up Loki’s notes and, after shooting an initial skeptical glance at the doodles, surveys his equation accompanied by nods and the occasional appreciative murmur. “That looks fine to me.” He holds the whiteboard marker out to him. “Please, show us.”

 _Let’s go_ , says The Voice, who is still just The Voice without a name, but it’s fucking looking forward to this and that can only mean trouble.

 _Don’t make a fool of me_ , Loki warns as he rises to his feet and takes the marker. “Yes, sir.”

Loki doesn’t realize until he’s made it halfway to the board that he didn’t take his notes with him and that he could have at least pretended he needed them if he had but, by that time, walking back and then towards the front _again_ feels like a death sentence and, _why the fuck does he feel so extra vulnerable and exposed today_ , _it’s like there’s a threat coming_ , _he can sense it_ , _and he’s helpless and there’s too many students and too many pairs of eyes and too much attention on him and_ , _drop by drop_ , _his feet and legs fill with lead until setting one high top in front of the other costs as much effort as dragging the Titanic across the floor_ , and he hears the students whisper in voices so low that he can’t make out the words but the whispers echo through his head as shrill screams all the same, _freak_ , _freak_ , _freak_ , _freak_ , _you don’t even need your fucking notes, why are you such a fucking showoff?_

 _Because I am smarter than every single one of you_ , thinks The Voice and, suddenly, Loki knows for sure he’ll be in trouble later but he also knows he’ll be safe for the moment because he can relax when The Voice takes over and that’s more important than whatever happens in the hallway after class. He can feel the confidence surge through him as his arm wipes the messed up equation off the board, leaving behind the drawing of a canon standing on a cliff to illustrate the path of a projectile when it’s launched from uneven ground at a twenty-five percent angle and the initial known and unknown variables for the equation. “Erik forgot to include the acceleration due to gravity before trying to solve the equation,” The Voice speaks for him in its typically arrogant fashion. “I mean, that’s probably because it wasn’t listed among the known variables but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out, right? Because we know that, since the direction of the acceleration vector in the coordinate system is _downwards_ , the magnitude of g has to be _negative_. So, if the alignment of the positive y-axis is upwards and the acceleration vector is downwards, we end up with a negative nine point eight meters per second squared magnitude of gravity for this problem.” He scribbles it down. “And voilá. Now, we can fix the rest.”

Loki writes the whole thing onto the board, the eyes of his classmates burning holes into the back of his shirt. Well, The Voice does the writing as he does the thinking because, weirdly enough, The Voice can’t do physics by itself. The Voice can just speak in front of revengeful teenagers without going into paralysis.

He finishes with the bell and chaos erupts. Mr. Brown tries to calm the class down but everyone’s jumping to their feet, loud chatter filling up the room. Mr. Brown gives up and comes up to the board, handing him his own notes instead of just leaving them on his desk in the back, which seems weird at first, but then his teacher says, “It’s interesting. The small g’s you wrote onto the board don’t look at all like the ones you wrote onto the paper.” He thrusts the paper in Loki’s hands. “Take a look. They’re not even the same style.”

 _What the actual fuck_ , Loki thinks, his eyes traveling from the paper to the board and back to the paper. _The Voice has its own handwriting?!_

“That’s my special whiteboard marker handwriting,” Loki jokes before he tiptoes back to his desk to get his things.

“I’m very impressed, Mr. Odinson. That was excellent work.”

Loki’s cheeks heat up. “Thank you.”

“Listen, as you probably know, I’m in charge of our school’s Mathletics—”

“I know,” Loki hurries to say, “but if you want to ask me to join, I can’t.”

 _Why not?_ asks The Voice.

“Why not?” asks Mr. Brown, beaming at him. “You’d be a great asset. Plus, it’d be a way for you to meet some people, you know. Maybe make some friends.”

 _Who wants to meet people? People are what is wrong with this world_. “I’ll think about it,” Loki lies.

“Great.”

Loki takes his time to pack up after his teacher leaves the room, entertaining a faint hope that, by the time he leaves, Erik Stevens and his three sidekicks will be gone, but they aren’t. Of course they aren’t. They’re waiting for him in the hallway, which is far too fucking crammed to make a run for it at this time of the day. “What’s this screwed new game you’re playing, huh, freak?” Erik growls as he closes in on him, flanked by his friends. “First you try to fake humility and chicken out of it and then you decide to make me look dumb anyway?”

“If I remember correctly, you made yourself look dumb first,” Loki sneers because he still has The Voice’s confidence. “It’s hardly my fault that you forgot gravity exists.”

“You wanna know about gravity?” Erik snaps and shoves him against the wall with so much force that a sharp pain stabs into Loki’s shoulders. “Why don’t we test how much gravity accelerates your fall when I kick your skinny fag ass to the floor?”

For the first time ever, Loki pushes back or tries to, anyway, because muscle mass just so happened to be out of stock the day he was born and Erik Stevens has a chest as solid as a mountain range. “Nice try, bitch,” Erik grumbles. With a snort, he hauls Loki away from the wall, spins him around and pushes him into the hallway so violently that he almost stumbles over his own feet.

Almost.

Loki pants, drawing himself up.

“Just stop it, Erik!”

Loki’s lips part in surprise as he sees one of the girls from his physics class move towards them. She positions herself between them, arms crossed against her chest. “Is your ego really that fragile that you have to constantly bother other people?”

“Why are _you_ protecting him, huh?” Erik sneers just as Loki’s nose catches a whiff of perfume and Erik keeps on speaking, saying, “Didn’t his big brother break your heart?” but Loki can’t focus on their words anymore because, suddenly, it’s no longer Erik Stevens and his gang in front of him, it’s another bunch of seniors and it’s April 2017, _no it’s not_ , _what the fuck_ , _it’s not_ , _IT IS NOT_ , Loki knows this but his brain doesn’t because it sends the signal of those seniors to his eyes, _no_ , _wait it’s the other way around_ , _usually_ , _isn’t it, FUCK YOU WHAT DOES IT MATTER_ , they are about to grab him and put him in that closet and he frantically looks around for Thor, but Thor is leaving, his red letterman jacket disappearing into the crowd right now, and he yells his brother’s name but Thor doesn’t turn around, no, why would he, he’s with his new girlfriend and then there’s a hand over his mouth and the hallway is fucking buzzing, _he doesn’t even hear him_ , and there’s nobody who’s going to help him now and there’s no air anymore, there’s just this dark closet in front of him, _NO_ , _NO_ , _NO_ , _THAT WAS JUST A DREAM_ , _A FUCKING NIGHTMARE_ , _YES_ , _BUT THAT WASN’T REAL_ , but it fucking feels real now because their hands are on him and his feet are being dragged across the floor and he cries out for help, _cries_ , _cries_ , _cries_ , _but there isn’t ANY SOUND and his heart_ , _for fuck’s sake_ , it beats so fast and _there’s no air_ , _there’s no fucking air_ , _EVERYTHING TURNS DARK_ , they did it, didn’t they, _fuck everything_ , they put him in that closet again and he won’t get out because Thor just turned around and left him there and it’s going to be hours in that darkness without enough air to breathe, he’ll suffocate, yes, he will, he’ll fucking suffocate and they’re not gonna find him until it’s too late and why can’t he have someone to protect him, why doesn’t he deserve protection, it’s just not fair, _it’s not fair_ , _it’s not fair_ , _it’s not fair_ , _it’s JUST NOT FAIR_ , but there’s people touching him all of a sudden and how can there be people in here when it’s so fucking dark and there’s people speaking to him too, actual people, not voices, no, but where are they because it’s so damn dark and he’s alone and just _HOW CAN ANYTHING STILL BE REAL_???

* * *

“You need to pick up your son. He’s having a nervous breakdown.”

After the session with Dr. van Dyne, Frigga has allowed herself to believe that everything would eventually take a turn for the better, especially since Loki seemed to be a little less on edge these past days. She clung to this hope like a fool, even though she knew deep inside her that returning to school was a horrible idea. But since both Loki and Odin insisted, she caved and now her son is paying the price. As Frigga speeds to his school after receiving the disturbing call, a thousand thoughts and images are whirling through her mind and jumbling into one another. The drawing showing Loki’s cowering body on a bathroom floor. _They punish me for using it_. The story of the janitor’s closet. _Anything can be a traumatic experience_. Nervous breakdown. She prepares herself for the worst but not even what she thought of as the worst can prepare her for what she actually sees when she enters the infirmary. Her son lies on the bed by the wall, curled up into a fetal ball, shaking so badly that his teeth clatter, heavy groans of agony tearing through his body. Her heart leaps into her throat.

“He won’t calm down,” the school nurse informs her. “We tried to examine him but every time we come too close, it seems to get worse, so we decided to wait for you.”

“Loki, are you alright?” Frigga gasps out of sheer conversational reflex. It’s glaringly obvious that he is as far from alright as he can possibly be. “Wh-what happened?” Loki doesn’t respond but he uncurls himself and snuggles up to her when she plops down next to his head and reaches for his trembling shoulders, _snuggles onto her lap like a goddamn child_ , almost burrowing into her stomach, his whole body trembling. She wraps her arms around him, instinctively trying to shush him in a soft whisper.

As soon as he feels her presence, her son’s body goes slack.

“Loki?” Frigga asks but he no longer moves. Her first impulse is to yank him up but then she can feel the heartbeat in his wrists softly pulsating against her thigh. She glances up at the nurse and the girl standing next to her that seems vaguely familiar, words failing her at the ludicrousness of having to cradle her teenage son to her chest in his High School’s infirmary to calm him down. Not that she didn’t want to wrap him up in her arms all this time and hold him to ease his pain but not like this. _Not like this_. “What on Earth happened here?”

“There’s this guy, Erik,” begins the girl, her voice breathy and panicky. “He pushed Loki against the wall and then he pushed him into hallway. They were about to have a fight but Erik’s much stronger, so I stepped in between them to stop him because … Loki wouldn’t have stood a chance and I don’t know why he made a move. But as soon as I stepped in, Loki just started hyperventilating. I swear to God, he was behind me or … or half next to me and … he just started shaking out of nowhere.”

“When I arrived, he was lying curled up on the floor,” says the nurse.

“Out of nowhere,” Frigga repeats as Principal Acker enters the room, increasing the embarrassment level of the entire situation tenfold. “Look at him! Does that seem likely to you?”

“Mrs. Fjörgyndottir,” says the girl, “I’m telling you that it’s true. He just … sort of checked out.”

“Everyone present told us that,” the principal adds. “And to be honest, I don’t find that so hard to believe. Your son isn’t exactly mentally stable. Maybe you should consider—”

“You listen to me, sir,” Frigga cuts him off as she wriggles herself out of Loki’s arms and rises to her feet. “With all due respect to the job you’re doing here every day, you don’t get to lecture me about my son’s mental state. Besides, I know for a fact that Loki was mistreated by his teachers and attacked by other students in your school before.” She pauses for effect. “He _told_ me this. If he’s mentally unstable, then it’s partly the fault of your institution. And you had better not forget that whatever lawyers this school can afford should I decide to make that public won’t be nearly as good as the ones that are on our payroll.”

The principal draws a sharp breath as Loki scrambles back into a sitting position and pulls his legs up to his chin.

“And I’m sure you’ll also be able to imagine how it would influence my decision if you failed to take action against those who harassed him or if Loki had to see as much as a scrap of footage of this incident posted by anyone anywhere online.” Frigga crosses her arms against her chest for emphasis.

From the corner of her eye, she sees that Loki is looping his arms around his propped up knees.

“Ma’am.” Principal Acker nods his reluctant understanding and leaves the room without another word. There’s an awkward pause and then the girl apologizes for having to go back to class. She looks at Loki, teeth pulling at her lower lip. For a second, it looks as if she is going to say something else but then she apparently decides against it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fjörgyndottir.”

“It’s not your fault.” Frigga clears her throat. “Thanks for standing up for him.”

“Of course. It was nice meeting you again.” With a shy smile, the girl turns around and leaves the room as well. Frigga is far too distraught to remember where she saw her before and it doesn’t really matter anyway, does it?

The nurse harrumphs awkwardly. “Can I … get you anything?”

“Nothing,” Loki suddenly whispers, his voice sounding eerily close to a toddler’s wail. He glances up at Frigga, eyes wider than the rings of Saturn. “We go home now, right?”

“Of course.” Frigga nods and helps her son up. Loki is still shaking and is very unsteady on his feet as well but she can’t smell any alcohol on his breath, which is only a very small comfort. She has to support him all the way through the now fortunately empty hallways towards the car.

“I am sorry,” Loki mumbles as she helps him into the passenger seat.

“It’s alright,” Frigga assures him. “It’s alright, honey.” She fastens his seatbelt because he makes no move to do it himself and he dozes off as soon as she starts the engine, softly murmuring.

* * *

“There you go,” Frigga murmurs as she helps Loki onto his bed, where he immediately curls up into a ball once more. She places her purse onto his nightstand and his book bag onto the floor, takes off his shoes and tucks him in, feeling a pang of guilt because she yearned to comfort him for weeks. But now that he lies there like this, vulnerable and in such obvious distress, she just wishes he’d bounce to his feet and scream all his anger into her face.

“Wh-where are you going?” Loki almost-whimpers in that oddly childish voice as she steps away from the bed.

“I’m just going to get you a glass of water,” Frigga says, rubbing his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” She hurries into the master bathroom to fill a glass and to retrieve the herbal sedative she picked up at the drug store the other day just in case. When she returns to Loki’s room, he is shaking again. She sits down beside him and rubs his back. “I want you to take these. They’re going to calm you down, okay?”

Loki glances up and gives a hardly perceptible nod. He doesn’t even resist when she holds his chin to put a pill into his mouth and then brings the glass to his lips. She gives him a second one and encourages him to drink all the water, which he does without questioning the necessity of it but not without spilling a few drops on his shirt.

“Alright, I’m going to let you rest now, okay?” Frigga asks, stroking over his hair. “I’ll be downstairs. If you need anything, just yell, alright?” She brushes a kiss against his forehead and rises to her feet but Loki reaches for her hand, squeezing it.

The uncharacteristically unabashed display of his emotional needs startles her. “Sh-should I stay?”

Loki nods and she makes herself comfortable on the bed, allowing him to snuggle up against her side again. “Do you want me to call Dr. van Dyne, honey?” Frigga asks, her heart aching for her afflicted boy.

“School is a bad idea,” Loki whispers, ignoring her question.

“I know.” Frigga nods even though he can’t see it with his head burrowing into her leg and tries to suppress her tears. “We’re going to stay home tomorrow, I promise.”

“Uh-huh.”

It isn’t until Frigga hears Loki’s breathing slow down as he sinks into an uneasy slumber that the absurdity of everything that just happened hits her with full force. And when it does, she can no longer hold herself together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo, for everyone who's been waiting for Thor to finally make an appareance, he's gonna be in the next chapter. Finally. I'm not sure how many people are still reading this, so please let me know if I made you lose interest because of something. Until next time xxx


	11. A trial of patience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor receives a text from someone he hasn't thought of in a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, he's finally made it into this story. Just a little background for y'all: Thor is a twenty-year-old college kid who's having the time of his life now that he's finally away from his pain in the ass kid brother. I imagine him to be a little like the Thor in the first movie but not as ignorant or arrogant and a little more perceptive. He's still very confident (one might say arrogant) but not in such a bratty, self-entitled way as he was in the movies (which makes sense because he ain't a prince whose father rules nine realms and whose family is basically the center of the universe). That said, let's go! :)

For the first two or three seconds after his phone chirps to alert him to a new message from someone he has saved as Janie, the name means nothing to Thor. He is lying on his bed after football practice, controller in one hand, phone in the other, staring at his display like an idiot before he remembers the freshman girl he dated in his senior year in High School. Jane Foster. She had this shy, very cute smile, was very smart and the spark in her eyes when she figured out a complex science problem was mesmerizing. Thor enjoyed her company and her admiration for him for a while but, in the end, she was only fourteen going on fifteen at the time and they both realized that a serious relationship wasn’t going to work, which is why they parted as friends. That ‘friendship’ didn’t last long either, of course it didn’t, when do after-break-up-friendships _ever_ really last at that age? No, Thor hasn’t heard from her since his graduation more than two years ago.

Which is why her texting him now can’t be a good thing. He pauses the game he’s playing and clicks on the message anyway and what he reads is even worse than the content he expected.

 _Hey, I don’t know if that’s still your number but if it is, I wanted to let you know that I hope your brother feels better soon_. _I know it’s probably weird to text you since we haven’t talked for so long but just so you know, I wish Loki the best, ok? Sad emoji_.

Thor is vaguely aware that first instinctual reaction is neither particularly eloquent nor entirely justifiable but it is what it is and it leads him to wish his ex-girlfriend to hell for rubbing his face into what he tried very hard _not_ to think about after his Mom called him a few weeks ago. His relationship with his pain in the ass jerk of a brother, who fucking blocked him over a ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ text after said call.

 _Screw him_.

To grow up with Loki as a kid brother has been a trial of patience even on the best of days. He kept everyone on their toes with his temper tantrums and his crying fits and his nightmares and his constant colds and fevers and his breakdowns and, _no,_ _honey_ , _Loki_ _can’t go to school today_ , _I need to call the nanny_ , _can you watch your brother_ , _sweetie_ , _just for an hour_ , _yeah sure, why don’t you go play with him_ , _sure_ , _sure_ , _sure_ , _can I sleep in your bed_ , _I’m scared_ , _Thor_ , _I’m scared_ , _sure_ , _OF COURSE_ , Loki was _always_ scared, always crying, always screaming, always absorbing all the attention when Frigga entered a room because she had to pick up and soothe baby Loki first before she could do _anything_ else. Going by the last call he received from his Mom, nothing has really changed since then. Frigga asked him how his summer had been and how football season started, yes, but he could tell that she was distracted and she brushed over his answers insultingly quickly before striking up the same old ‘Loki this, Loki that’ tune. Not that Thor is holding grudges or anything. The problem isn’t the attention that Loki got when he was a kid. He needed that attention and, for some reason, Thor always understood that. His little brother has never been like other people. He has a giant fucking brain that never gives him a minute’s rest and he was hypersensitive as a kid.

The real problem is all the attention Loki gets now. The same old tune no longer fits the current mood. It’s like playing a horror movie soundtrack during a wedding reception. Loki is no longer that little kid with the huge green eyes and something vulnerable and breakable about him that made Thor want to protect him at all costs; that made him want to comfort him and pick him up and carry him around, to make him smile and pinch his cheeks and tickle the soles of his feet. Loki is a High School senior that grew into a sulky, wayward emo teenager after coming to Infinity High, choosing to make it damn near impossible for anyone to enjoy his company ever since he jumped on that train. It started with a few snarky remarks here and there that Thor could deal with but ended with a scathing contempt for Thor’s alleged stupidity and his career choice that he can’t just ignore, as his Mom asked him to several times because his brother “is going through such a tough time” and Thor needs “to cut him some slack”. If you believed Frigga, Loki’s entire life has been this rough shit show—which it certainly wasn’t and Thor would know because _was fucking there_ —and she remains conveniently oblivious to the fact that her poor little Loki turned into a complete asshole. She still treats him like a toddler, still lets him absorb all her attention, still lets him get away with things that Thor himself got grounded for.

Not that this last thing really matters, okay, maybe it does, maybe he _is_ a tiny little bit resentful but who can blame him? Loki brought all the resentment upon himself with his fucking edgy-ness.

And now Jane Foster texts him after two years and, nope, it’s not to catch up or anything. It’s because Loki twisted her around his little finger as well, making her fall for the ‘Loki Odinson is having such a tough time’ narrative. He probably threw a tantrum in school, Thor figures, because if he remembers correctly, she was a freshman when his brother was, which means they’re both seniors right now. And there’s really no other way Thor could imagine Jane spending any time with Loki outside of a classroom. 

_I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you_ , Thor types and then hits send in a flash of anger because, after his brother blocked him, he swore to himself that this was the last time he’d give Loki the satisfaction of engaging with his theatrics. _He’s a fucking drama queen_.

Jane starts typing, _typing_ , _typing_ , _typing_ _for what feels like ten minutes_ , and then stops.

Okay, maybe he’s more than a tiny little bit resentful. _Thanks though_ , Thor begins because, unapproachable emo jerk or not, he can’t really stop caring about his little brother even if he wants to sometimes and he also knows deep down that their Mom wouldn’t have called him if something wasn’t seriously wrong. Seriously wrong as in wronger than usual. But she didn’t really say anything, so maybe Jane can fill in the blanks for him. _But we don’t really talk anymore_ , Thor continues but deletes it again when Jane starts typing again. 

While she’s texting, it occurs to Thor that he sounded exactly like his Dad, which isn’t exactly the most flattering sound in the world, and that nothing he could type would change the fact that he came across as a total asshole himself. When she stops again, he blows out a breath to steel himself and then presses the call button.

Jane answers on the second ring. “Hey,” she says, her voice as soft and timid as he remembers it.

“Hey.”

“Okay, this is awkward,” Jane mumbles. “I-I shouldn’t have texted you. It’s really none of my business anymore, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, I’m uh …” _Yes, this is super awkward_. “It’s just … Loki and I, we don’t really talk anymore,” Thor blurts out because that’s his style. “He kinda hates me and he’d probably hate you too if he knew you texted me.”

“Oh.”

“Not that you should feel bad about it though,” Thor hurries to add. _For fuck’s sake_. “You probably meant well.” He draws in a breath. “Okay, you’re right. This _is_ awkward, I’m sorry. So, uh, how have been you doing? Everything alright?” He doesn’t even know why he’s trying to make conversation. It’s not that he thought of her once ever since he moved out of his parents’ house.

“Yeah, I’m great actually,” says Jane and Thor can hear the smile in her voice. “I, uh, got a full MIT scholarship.”

“Congratulations, that’s awesome.”

“Listen,” says Jane after another moment of awkward silence. “It might not be my business anymore but I think you’re wrong about your brother.”

Thor draws in a sharp breath, thinking of how to put what he wants to say nicely. “Maybe I am but I don’t really wanna talk about it,” he tries.

“We don’t have to actually talk about it. Just hear me out, okay? Loki, uh, he had a really, really bad anxiety attack in school today.” _A fucking anxiety attack? Seriously? Why does there always have to be something going on with that punk?_ “And, uh, I was going to tell your Mom but the nurse and the principal were there and I just didn’t want to draw their atten—”

“The _nurse_?” Thor cuts in. “Just how bad was it?”

“Really bad. We had to take him to the infirmary and your Mom had to come pick him up.”

 _Fuck_ , is the only thought on Thor’s mind because, suddenly, he feels like someone threw him back into elementary school where Frigga always had to pick Loki up in all sorts of ways and his resentment resolves. _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_. Jane keeps talking but all his mind can focus on are long forgotten memories that resurface out of nowhere; memories of the countless breakdowns Loki suffered through as a kid whenever Frigga left the room, let alone the house. Loki’s world shattered to pieces every single time, as if her vanishing through the door meant she wasn’t ever gonna return from the dentist or the grocery store or even the fucking mailbox. He would start crying so badly that he choked on his sobs. Sometimes, he would fall into hysteria when their parents were late and even if Thor or someone else explained to him that they were stuck in traffic or needed to put in more hours at work or whatever else, Loki wouldn’t understand. He was able to solve third grade mathematical equations and recite all states and their capitals in strict alphabetical order in preschool but still, his mind would just kinda switch itself off when he didn’t know where their parents were and he’d completely lose his shit, crying himself hoarse until they finally returned home. He remembers how he tried to pick Loki up to make his little brother stop crying whenever their nanny took her own sweet time to comfort him, how he tried to carry him around long before their Mom told him it was okay to lift him up and how he toppled over with him sometimes, making Loki cry even more.

“Thor?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah?”

“He _called out_ for you,” says Jane and her tone makes it clear that she’s repeating herself. “It was really weird because it was almost like he … he was convinced you were there.”

 _I think he misses you_.

 _What the freaking fuck_.

“Look, I-I’m sorry,” Jane offers when Thor doesn’t find the words to reply. “I should’ve stayed out of your business.”

“No, it’s alright. It’s just …” Thor harrumphs. “Never mind.” He thanks her for letting him know and ends the call no less awkwardly than it began. Submerged by a sudden wave of anger because Frigga didn’t even bother to fucking tell him what’s really going on, he dials his mother’s number.

* * *

Frigga’s mind needs a moment to realize that the vibration noise isn’t part of the strange dream she’s having and another to struggle out of sleep and reach for the phone that is vibrating in her purse on Loki’s nightstand. He’s still lying curled up by her side but, miraculously, he doesn’t stir at the noise that, to her ears, sounds like a hundred decibels at least. She pulls out the phone, careful with her movements, ready to reject the call, but then she sees that it’s Thor calling and seeing her son’s name on the display fills her with a curious sort of longing she never experienced before. She accepts the call, whispering, “Just a minute.” It isn’t until she has spoken that she realizes how tear-choked her voice still sounds.

“Mom?” Thor asks.

“Yes,” she whispers back before she slowly, carefully untangles herself, grabs her purse and tiptoes out of Loki’s room.

“Are you crying?” Thor asks.

“No, I … I was just ...” She clears her throat and flicks a glance at her watch to check how much time she actually spent inside her son’s room and realizes that it is almost ten p.m. already, which explains her stiff neck but also fills her with relief because Loki has slept for six hours straight, finally getting a little rest. The realization fills her with peace and new strength, which she’ll need because she is only too aware of the fact that she’ll make Loki suffer even more if she continues to let herself be overwhelmed by the pain her son’s suffering is causing her. Loki doesn’t need to worry about her on top of everything else in his current state and neither does Thor. It’s her job to reassure her sons, not the other way around.

“Just what?” Thor probes her.

“Never mind. How are you?” Frigga asks. Between everything going on with Loki recently and Thor always having been so easy-going and happy and strong, seemingly not needing her at all, she probably didn’t give her eldest that much of her attention these past months. _Who on earth determined that parenting was to involve so many feelings of guilt?_ “How are things going with the scouts? Any offers yet?”

“Do you really want to know?” Thor asks back, not even bothering to hide the resentment in his voice.

“Of course,” Frigga insists but she can’t seem to be able to shake the feeling that she’s lying to herself because she failed him too.

“The 49ers are interested,” Thor tells her, his voice swelling with pride and she can perfectly picture the lopsided grin on his face. _God_ , _how she misses to have him in the house_. “I mean they haven’t said anything but the scout guy, his name’s Bolten, I could feel him watching me at practice today. He always watches me. He tries to make sure his face stays unreadable but I’m not an idiot. I know when someone sizes me up.”

“That’s great,” Frigga exclaims even though San Francisco is five-hundred-sixty miles away and he’d probably visit even less if he moved to Northern California. “That’s amazing.”

“Come on, Mom,” Thor says before he goes on to prove that he’s so much more perceptive than most people, especially Loki, give him credit for. “You don’t really think that’s amazing. If you had your way, I’d play for the Raiders.”

“Just because it’d keep you closer,” Frigga insists. “But I know they’re not the team you want to play for, so of course I’d be happy for you if the 49ers signed you on.”

“Oh yeah, what if the Chiefs or the Ravens did?” Thor teases her.

“You don’t want to move to Baltimore or, uh—”

“Kansas City?” Thor asks with an undertone of accusation in his voice. “They’re literally the best team right now and that’s the one you forget?”

“I have a lot on my plate,” Frigga exhales. “Which I know isn’t an excuse but …”

“Yeah about that,” Thor begins. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

Frigga clears her throat, scouring her brain for an answer that might put her eldest at ease. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Thor replies and she can hear the anger seep back into his voice. Sometimes, he’s so much like his father that it scares her. “Maybe you wanna tell me the real reason you called the other day.”

She draws a sharp breath. “I don’t know what you—”

“Cut the crap, Mom,” Thor snaps at her. “How is Loki? How is he _really_?”

“He’s,” she begins, not really sure how to tell Thor the truth without breaking her promise to Loki, “he’s having—”

“Just in case you’re about to tell me he’s having a hard time, save it,” Thor cuts her off. “I already know he had panic attack in school today.”

“How do you know that?” Frigga asks, a wave of terror mixed with anger surging through her stomach. “Did y-you see it online? Did anyone post anything?”

“Online?” Thor asks back, dumbfounded. “N-no. Jane told me.”

“Jane,” Frigga repeats. _Yes, of course_. The girl standing up for Loki and waiting in the infirmary with him until she arrived was Thor’s ex-girlfriend. Loki was thirteen when Thor started dating her and she always seemed very fond of Loki, not least because of his intellect.

“But Loki doesn’t reply to my texts anymore,” Thor goes on. “Not only that, he actually blocked me. So, what the hell is going on?”

This new piece of information raises even more doubts about her their relationship, stunning Frigga into confused silence.

“Guess I’m gonna come home to check for myself then,” Thor grumbles and tears of relief pool into Frigga’s eyes at the thought of her grown son’s presence in the house. She wills them away. “Is that your strategy, Mom? Keep me in the dark until I finally get my ass home?”

“No,” Frigga objects even though, maybe, subconsciously it was. “He made me promise not to tell you.”

She can hear the surprise in her son’s voice. “Wh-what? Why?”

“I don’t know, Thor,” Frigga whispers. “Probably for the same reason he blocked you but I really don’t know what that reason is.”

She hears him inhale and exhale a long breath and she knows he’s trying to contain his anger. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, you left,” Frigga points out carefully. “You stopped visiting. You stopped—”

“Okay, what is this?” Thor yells and, just like that, his anger breaks free. Just like Odin’s. Just like Loki’s. “Are you actually blaming _me_ for anything? I _left_ because Dad _kicked_ me _out_ and I stopped visiting because Loki treats me like an asshole every time I come over. That isn’t my fault, Mom. That’s on _him_. He doesn’t want me there.”

“I’m not saying it’s your _fault_ ,” Frigga tries again. “And I know you’re right about him pushing people away but it’s not because he doesn’t want you here. He’s … hurting. Look, you know how sensitive he is and—”

“It’s not as if you won’t ever let me forget it,” Thor snaps and the bottom almost drops out of her stomach when he continues. “But I am more than Loki’s big brother, okay? I am my own person with my own life and if that little punk doesn’t want to be a part of it anymore, I’m not gonna—”

“He does,” Frigga cuts in. “He just doesn’t know to express it.”

Thor pauses a beat. “Why not?”

“Because he’s sick.”

“What do you mean sick?” Thor asks and, just like that, his anger has evaporated entirely. There is an urgency to his voice that conveys exactly how much he too loves and misses his brother. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know,” says Frigga. “Not yet. I took him to a doctor but it takes time to figure out what—”

Thor cuts her off with a snort. “And when you say ‘doctor’, you actually mean ‘shrink’, right?”

There’s a faint trace of contempt in her son’s voice that makes her stomach clench once more. She recalls how Loki parroted Odin the day they met Dr. van Dyne because her husband never even bothered to conceal that he regards most mental illnesses as nothing but fashionable complaints and believes therapy to be a total waste of time. And, much to her dismay, Thor seems to have internalized his father’s opinion on the matter. “Therapist,” Frigga corrects him rather waspishly. “And there’s nothing wrong with seeing one.”

Her eldest sounds offended. “Did I say that?”

“I don’t know.” Frigga blows out a breath. “Did you?”

“No,” Thor protests, indignantly. “I just don’t understand why you always beat around the bush like that. You’re always so secretive, like, ‘Oh, he’s having a hard time’ or ‘He’s seeing a doctor’. Why don’t you just say ‘Loki’s having mental health issues and needs to see a sh…therapist’? It’s like you’re embarrassed or something.”

“Embarrassed?” Frigga echoes, feeling strangely caught in the act even though she doesn’t understand why. She isn’t embarrassed. Not because Loki needs therapy, that is. Perhaps she is embarrassed because she had to admit to herself that she couldn’t protect him.

“Yeah, embarrassed. Like it’s the end of the world that Loki needs help.” Thor huffs a laugh. “Seriously, who are you kidding? Loki always had issues and everyone who knows him knows that. You don’t have to pretend he’s normal.”

“Please, don’t make it sound as if he isn’t ‘normal’.” Frigga blows out a breath when she realizes that it’s not contempt she heard in Thor’s voice. It’s that peculiar type of pity for others that comes from an unshakable, almost arrogant belief in one’s own strength. “Look, why don’t you come visit this weekend and we talk in person?”

“You’re baiting me,” Thor remarks sourly. “Seriously? I’ll only get the truth if I come over?”

“No, I am not baiting you, honey,” Frigga replies even though a small part of her might be doing just that because, even over the phone, Thor is exuding the protective tower-of-strength type of readiness to act that she needs from her emotionally unavailable husband and that Odin can’t seem to give her anymore. She knows how utterly wrong and selfish this is but that part of her really wishes Thor would come home because his presence would soothe her. But, much more than that, there’s one thing about her son’s words that has irritated her since their conversation began. “It’s just that I think if you _really_ wanted to know what was going on or how your brother was doing, you would have stopped by already.”

There is a long pause.

“Nice going, Mom,” Thor grumbles eventually. “I’m gonna be there for dinner tomorrow, okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is so much going on in this family and exploring all the dysfunctional dynamics within it is a pleasure for every writer. There's probably ten different conclusions you could draw from the conversation between Frigga and Thor alone and I'm really curious what you think. Special thanks goes to black_feather_fiction, whose last comment helped me to edit Frigga's perspective in this chapter. Thanks again for taking the time to write out how you see her because you were absolutely right and Frigga knows this but, as a mother, she is blinded by her instincts to protect her child. Now, let's see what happens tomorrow, yes? 
> 
> See you soon <3


	12. Not a single memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after. Loki POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're probably gonna have your issues with Frigga in this chapter and that's fine by me.

**_Friday, September 20 th, 2019_ **

**_  
9 days to the incident_ **

  
Despite the familiar sight of his room, Loki can’t shake a lingering sensation of dread during the first few seconds of wakefulness. His heart is racing. His body is drenched in sweat. He vaguely remembers that he met the incarnations of The Voices in some sort of crazy ass nightmare-hallucination-expansion-of-consciousness-LSD-trip type of experience. He still feels their presence, there were at least three, no four, there were four, and he still senses the smoldering rage in Nikias’s coal black eyes, still hears the echo of the reassuring words of a little child telling him that it’s okay to cry and to be hugged and that his Mom’s hugs _feel so good_. That little child is still with him inside his head. He gulps for air, _deep breaths_ , _deep breaths_ , and slowly but surely, the dream slips off of him.

The relief Loki feels is short-lived because as soon as his mind is fully awake, it reminds him of what happened before this whatever-it-was. Mr. Brown’s advanced physics class. The messed-up equation. His teacher’s offer to join the Mathletics. Erik Stevens threatening to kick his skinny fag ass to the floor. The corridor dissolving into darkness.

Then, nothing.

Not a single memory.

Loki scrambles into a half-sitting position, his brain taking stock of the situation. He’s lying in his bed, the contours of his room smudged by the first light of dawn creeping in through the curtains, and he’s still fully dressed except for his shoes. _Well, if that doesn’t scream bender_. Loki blindly feels for his phone that usually lies on the nightstand but it isn’t there. Panic blossoming in the pit of his stomach, he switches on his bedside lamp and spots his book bag is on the floor, next to his shoes. He reaches for the bag, opens the front pocket and pulls out his phone. The display informs him in glaring white letters and numbers that it’s five thirty on Friday morning.

 _Five fucking thirty_.

 _Holy fucking s_ _hit_. 

That’s a fourteen-hour blackout. _Fourteen fucking hours_. A lot can happen in fourteen fucking hours. Loki’s chest tightens and, once again, breathing seems impossible, fuck, fuck, fuck, _what I am doing_ , _why I am such a horrible failure_ , _why do I always have to mess up like this_ , fuck, fuck, fuck, _have I been drinking_ —

 _Nope_.

 _Then what did I do_?

 _You didn’t do anything_ , says the child. _I did_.

 _Pssst_.

 _What does that … No!_ Loki doesn’t even want to know what that means. _Just no! **NO, NO, NOOOO!**_

His mind going blind with confusion and terror, Loki reaches for his book bag again, groping for the emergency pack of razor blades he keeps in there just in case his Mom will hit on the idea to ransack his room and confiscate his stuff again. He retrieves the plastic box, pulls out a blade and unwraps it, his heart thumping so violently in his chest that he’s sure it’s gonna shatter and kill him instantly. Not that this ever happens, _unfortunate_ , _isn’t it_ , _fuck yes_ , _NO_ , _stop talking to me_ , _all of you_ , _just SHUT THE FUCK UP_. To hell with what Dr. van Dyne said, he _has_ to make it stop, he has to cut out the crazy, the voices, he has to cut out this mental cancer festering inside of him, _you can’t stay in my head_ , _go away_ , _leave me alone_ , _what did I ever do_. Hands trembling, Loki rolls up his sleeve, _no free space on the arms_ , _what to do_ , it doesn’t really matter, not anymore, no, he rolls the hem of his shirt up, cuts into the flesh of his belly and waits, waits for the blood to spill out and the air to stream back into his lungs.

Loki inhales a long breath and then exhales, sinking back into the pillows, letting the relief flood through his body.

 _It’s okay_ , whispers the little child inside his head. _You’re safe_.

“Yeah,” Loki mumbles because, of course, he’s safe. He’s safe for the moment. He’s safe until the next fucking blackout strikes out of nowhere.

He stays in his bed until the desire for a cold shower becomes too strong to resist. Not that a shower will be pleasant. Showering with fresh cuts feels like an acupuncture with igneous surgical needles but it’s the only thing that’ll make Loki feel _awake_ awake. Which is why he crawls out of bed eventually, walks over to his door and opens it a tiny little bit, peering outside to see if anyone’s there. The hallway is empty and he doesn’t hear any noise, so he hurries into the bathroom and locks the door behind him, breathing another sigh of relief.

* * *

“Good morning,” Frigga says when Loki tiptoes out of the bath, wrapped up in his fluffy black bathrobe but still in the dark about what happened the day before. She is leaning against the wall with an anxiously pleasant smile that doesn’t quite manage to mask how worried she is. _Fuck_. Here’s exhibit A that something shitty must have happened because she didn’t look that worried anymore since before he met Dr. van Dyne last week. 

“Morning,” Loki mumbles, despising himself for his almost apologetic tone. This is the real reason why blackouts suck. It’s not so much because he can’t remember. That alone is a crappy feeling, yes, but it’s a feeling he could live with. What really sucks is that his Mom probably remembers the fourteen hours he doesn’t have mental access to, that it gives her leverage and that trying to get her to tell him what happened without giving away that he himself can’t remember is a conversational task that requires more brainpower than he possesses at this time of the day.

“I made us some breakfast,” she says, producing exhibit B. “Are you hungry?”

Loki nods weakly and follows his Mom down the stairs because rule number one when you have a blackout is that you have to try to be as amenable as you possibly can; even if all you want to do is crawl into a hole and die. For a brief moment, Loki wonders if they beat him up but he doesn’t have a black eye and his body doesn’t hurt except for the cuts. No, he must have messed up in school. _Again_.

 _Fuck_.

“How come _you_ made breakfast?” Loki teases weakly as he slides onto a chair, glancing at the food she prepared for him. Two slices of warm buttered toast cut into strips and arranged around a, hopefully, soft boiled egg, a glass of freshly squeezed passion fruit juice and a side of strawberries. His favorite when he was a kid. “You’ve got something to atone for?”

“Don’t I always?” Her smile is the guilty kind of sad. “Are you feeling a little better?”

“A little,” says Loki because there’s no way in hell he’d still get away with telling her that he’s fine or that everything’s alright; not even when he doesn’t have blackouts.

“I’m glad. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Actually, no.” Loki takes a strip of toast but as soon as he swallows the first bite, his stomach begins to revolt against the food. Well, it’s not his stomach, really. It’s probably Nikias. It has to be him. The fucking antichrist. _Let me eat_. Loki brings the toast to his mouth but Nikias puts it down again. _Stop it_ , Loki hisses inwardly, trying to regain control over his hand, trying to pick up his damn breakfast. Just when he manages to lift the toast a tiny little bit, Nikias puts it back on the plate.

 _I fucking hate you_. _Stop it!_

Loki can feel his Mom’s gaze burning into him and he glances up, flicking a nervous smile at her.

“You don’t have to eat if you don’t feel like it,” his Mom whispers and she looks absolutely, miserably horrified. “I just thought you might be hungry.”

“I am,” Loki assures her and he is. “I really am.” He is fucking ravenous. _You listen to me, okay? I know you probably think you’re this super strong, super edgy rebel type of guy that doesn’t need anyone or anything to survive but I have bad news for you, Niki._

 _Do **not** call me that_.

 _This is **my** body and it needs sustenance_. _If I don’t eat breakfast now, I’ll faint and if I do, you’ll faint with me, so suck it up, bitch!_

 _It’s my body too_.

 _You wish_. _Now, get the hell out_.

When there is no more response, Loki victoriously, almost gleefully, picks up the rest of the strip, shoving it into his mouth before he tries to cut off the top of his egg as casually as possible given the fact that his hands are trembling a little.

“It’s a little cracked, I’m sorry,” Frigga offers around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. She looks no less worried than before but, at least, she tries to smile, tries to keep it together.

“That’s because you’re out of practice,” Loki replies as he dips the next strip of toast into the yolk and tries to remember the last time Frigga made him breakfast on a school day or any day really. He draws a blank. “But the texture’s perfect.”

She flashes him another sad smile.

“So, how’s work?” Loki couldn’t care less about whatever is going on with the firm right now but he has to make conversation somehow.

Frigga’s face sours instantly. “Your father came home after eleven p.m. and left again before five a.m. The DA produced new evidence in the Senator Brody case yesterday evening.”

“And judged by the look on your face, it’s not testimonial,” Loki jokes.

She chides him with a glare. “It’s a fingerprint of our client on one of the,” she cuts herself off. “Never mind. The defense never saw this print before and the prosecution claims they didn’t either. The court is in recess until Monday morning and, in case it matches the defendant’s print, your father’s defense will collapse in on itself.”

“Ouch,” Loki comments flatly.

“Which is why I have to find a forensic expert that can disprove their claim that the print developed on its own _after_ it was sealed away in a bag.”

“Come on, really? Accusing the opposition of tampering with the evidence? That’s the lamest shit. Doesn’t Dad have any better ideas?” Loki scoffs.

“Not yet.” His Mom draws a sharp breath and scrutinizes him, probably in order to determine his current mental state, which is surprisingly far away from any type of meltdown considering everything that happened in the past twenty-hour hours. She seems to come to the same conclusion. “Look, I know I promised that—”

“It’s fine,” Loki cuts her off because he has no idea what exactly it was that she promised him and it doesn’t matter. If she’s gonna break her promise anyway, it’s better not to know what it was in the first place.

“No, please. I feel horrible.”

“I said it’s fine,” Loki replies and they finish their breakfast in awkward silence. Glancing at his Mom eating and sipping her coffee while he eats, Loki is shocked to realize how much older she looks. Her strength isn’t _beginning t_ o dwindle, he silently corrects his earlier observation. Her strength is as good as depleted. And seeing his Mom so distraught is the scariest fucking thing in the world. It’s so scary that he can’t think of anything to say because he’s afraid she’ll burst into tears if he says the wrong thing. When he’s done, he thanks her for the breakfast—because even if it was awkward and tense, he really misses to spend time with her—and walks up the stairs to his bathroom.

She follows him after a few moments, knocking softly. “Look, why don’t you come with me?” she asks after he gave her the permission to enter.

“What do you mean?” Loki asks back as he starts to rub make-up into his skin with a sponge.

“To work.”

“Come with you to work? What am I? Five?” Loki snaps but his chest yawns open at the thought. _Oh, don’t tell me you wanna go to work with Mommy_ , _you pathetic little baby_.

“That’s not what I meant,” Frigga objects. “It seems we could really use your help.”

“Just how dense do you think I am?” Loki snaps as he rubs the make-up in deeper. “You just don’t want me to go to school.”

“School?” Confusion flickers across his Mom’s features. “What do you mean school? Yesterday you admitted that going to school was a bad idea. I thought …”

 _Yeah, blackouts really suck balls_. “Well, I changed my mind,” Loki replies flatly. “That can happen, you know. I’m a teenager. We’re rumored to be very skittish.”

Frigga blows out a sigh. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“Of course I do,” Loki replies but, for some reason, he knows that she knows that he’s lying.

“Then, what happened?”

“Erik Stevens is what happened,” Loki snarls. He unscrews the cap of his eyeliner and begins to draw a thick line onto his upper right lid. “Can you believe that he forgot to include gravity in a calculation of a projectile’s trajectory?”

“I’m sure that’s a crime against Newton himself,” says Frigga and Loki has to give her some credit for this remark. “Well, he did,” he says as he starts on his left eye, “and he didn’t like it that I pointed out his mistake, so he came for me. End of story.”

“And then what?”

Loki reaches for the mascara and applies a thick coat. “Nothing.”

“How did you get home?”

“Gosh Mom, just stop the cross-examination, okay?” Loki yells, misdirected anger exploding in the pit of his stomach. “We’re not in court. If you want to ask me something, ask it directly.”

“I already did,” Frigga reminds him. “What you don’t remember is that you had a panic attack when Erik came for you and—”

“I never had a panic attack in my entire life,” Loki objects even though he doesn’t even know what a panic attack feels like, so maybe he did have one.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t a panic attack but it was some kind of _attack_ ,” Frigga continues. “You couldn’t breathe. You were … very stressed.”

“It’s senior year, Mom. Everyone is stressed out of their fucking minds.”

“Not like this. I had to pick you up from the infirmary.” _Holy shit, this is a whole new level of fucked-up_. “You didn’t _come_ home, honey, I had to _take_ you home”— _a fucking scary level of fucked-up—_ “and when I did, you weren’t …”

“What?” Loki brings himself to ask. He doesn’t want to hear the answer because someone else kept his body alive and functioning for fourteen fucking hours, _no_ , _no_ , _no_ , _don’t go there_ , he’s not going crazy, this isn’t _really_ happening, there has to be an explanation. Dr. van Dyne can’t be right that any of this messed up shit show is actually real, it can’t be real, Nikias isn’t a real person, he can’t be, Loki is making him up because he has a wild imagination and because he’s a hopeless weirdo freak and a lunatic, a lost cause, that’s all.

“Yourself,” Frigga whispers. “You said there were different voices inside your head but sometimes it’s almost as if you speak in a different voice too.”

“You know that puberty vocal change is a thing, right?” Loki retorts and he can’t even begin to explain to himself how he’s able to keep this up. All he wants is to throw himself into her arms and sink against her chest and allow her to wrap her arms around him and make him feel safe and whole and sane again. So much for being surprisingly far away from any type of meltdown.

Frigga doesn’t look at all reassured. Of course she doesn’t. “Loki, please. I guess it was a little rash of me to suggest that you drop out of school entirely. We can still decide that later. But I want you to take a little time off. We can get you a doctor’s note and you stay home for a few weeks. You settle into therapy, we see how things go and then you can go back to school after Thanksgiving and I’m sure you’ll catch up on the material in no time.”

 _That’s two months away_. _Is she fucking losing her mind?_

 _But that means two months without having to worry about Erik fucking Stevens or anyone else_.

 _Not a chance_. _You really wanna be the pathetic loser that takes sick leave from fucking High School? You need to grow some fucking balls_.

“… and I would be a lot less worried if I knew you weren’t there until you’re better,” Frigga is saying.

“It’s funny how you go crazy thinking of me being in school but me staying here all by myself with ample opportunities to hurt myself doesn’t seem to overly worry you,” Loki points out, his voice suddenly sharper than the edges of his razors.

Her face falls. “It does,” Frigga whispers, her voice breaking, “believe me, it _does_ , but at the very least, there’s no one here to harass you.”

 _She’s kinda wrong about that, isn’t she_?

“Look, I don’t know how,” Frigga begins, tears pooling into her eyes. She hastily wipes them away before they can spill out but Loki sees them anyway and when he does, someone pulls the metaphorical rug from under his feet because he can’t see her cry. He can’t see her stop being his Mom who protects him and fights for him and tries to make things better for him. She can’t break down. She can’t. He can’t let that happen. “Alright, okay,” Loki concedes but even before he can finish speaking, Nikias hijacks his mouth and protests with an indignant, “Noooo,” which makes both answers sound as if they’re coming out at once.

Shocked to see his Mom’s features slipping even more, Loki clamps his mouth shut in a sudden burst of anxiety. “Wh-what,” Frigga stammers.

“Nothing,” Loki hurries to say, the word muffled by his fingers. He carefully lowers his hands. “I’ll stay here, I promise. I’ll stay home, okay?”

Frigga nods, looking utterly wretched. “I’ll stay as well,” she decides. “I’ll handle things from here. I’ll call your father. I’ll let him know that—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Loki cuts her off and there are no words in his lexicon to describe the emptiness that spreads out through his chest. “Dad will have a heart attack if you let him down. I understand. I’m not a baby anymore.”

Frigga draws a trembling breath. “Loki, I promise you—”

“Don’t,” Loki begs.

“—after those two cases are closed, I won’t work as much anymore. Maybe I’ll even look for somewhere else to work. The assistant manager is ready to step up now. Maybe I’ll just take a few months off and—”

“Stop!” Loki screams, submerged by a wave of sadness and longing and, with it, anger. Nikias’s anger.

Frigga startles. “What?”

“First of all, if I don’t lose what’s left of my mind, I’ll be going to college next year. It’s a bit too late to have a go at the whole stay-at-home-Mom gig _now_ , don’t you think?” Loki laughs through the tears that are already stinging in his eyes. “Second, if the assistant manager _were_ ready to step up, you wouldn’t have to handle this one yourself, would you? And third, you know what will happen if you turn your back on the firm, right? You’ll get kicked out of this house.” He laughs again, a shrill sound of utter despair.

Frigga reaches for his hair, twisting a damp strand between her thumb and index finger. “Well, if that happens, I’ll take you with me and we’ll move out together, deal?”

Shock slams into Loki at the mere thought of such a colossal change and the shock blocks every thought. Despite his usual perceptiveness, he doesn’t even consciously realize that her tone indicates she’s been contemplating this before. Too stunned to speak, Loki just nods.

“Just come with me, okay?” She locks eyes with him, smiling a pleading smile. “Please.”

Loki swallows because he wants to say yes. He wants it more than anything, wants to spend the day with her no matter where they are as long as she is close, even if it’s in her office at the firm where he used to spend many afternoons as a kid when he couldn’t make it through a school day, but he knows he can’t have that. He isn’t a kid anymore. _He can’t be weak_. “We both know that Dad wouldn’t want me there and that’s alright,” Loki says even though his heart physically hurts when he thinks about how she’ll walk through the door in a minute if he doesn’t hold her back. “I’m gonna read a book or something.” Maybe he can try to draw the people belonging to the Voices that he met in his dream.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Mom. I’m gonna be okay, I promise,” Loki lies. “Just go and do what you have to do.”

 _No, you’re not gonna be okay_. _You’re gonna cry as soon as she walks through that door_.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?” Frigga is waiting for his blessing and how could Loki possibly tell her that he wants her to stay? He’s almost sixteen years old, by far old enough to not lose his shit in an empty house, and Odin will give them both hell if she lets him down when he’s defending a senator because of Loki’s childish theatrics. He can’t do that to her. He can’t do that to himself. His Dad would lose his fucking shit and they’d both have to pay for it. It’s not worth it. It’s just not worth it because his Dad behaved almost like the Dad he used to be for the past few days or so and he can’t ruin this. _He can’t be difficult_. 

“Okay,” says Loki.

Frigga swoops him into her arms and starts to cradle him, which actually makes everything so much worse, so he just jerks away. “I love you, Loki,” Frigga whispers and pulls him towards her again to brush a kiss onto his forehead.

“I know,” he chokes out.

“If you need anything, please call me, okay?” Frigga softly rubs his first cheek and then his shoulder before she turns around with an anguished smile when he finally nods. She turns around and leaves the bathroom and walks down the stairs and starts collecting her things.

 _You’re gonna cry like some fucking baby because your Mommy goes to work_.

 _I’m not_.

 _You are_. _Mommy_ , _stay home_ , _puh-lease_.

 _I AM NOT_!

Loki bursts into tears as soon as he hears the garage door click shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that this is really, really messed up but I hope to have been able to demonstrate how the family dynamics are powered. In a lot of ways, much of what Loki goes through he goes through because everyone around him is just trying very hard not to piss Odin off and Loki internalized the idea that he deserves whatever comes his way if he dares to upset or even inconvenience his father. The next chapter will add Thor to the mix and aren't we all curious how that'll go? Who do you think will make it home first, Thor or Frigga? 
> 
> Thanks for reading. See you soon x


	13. She must have said something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Loki finally meet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you've all been waiting for this to happen as much as you've been dreading it and, yeah, all of your concerns were pretty much justified. And, of course, you were all right about who makes it home first.

When he pulls into the driveway of his family home, Thor is still unsure what to expect after talking to his Mom on the phone. Even if she denied it, he knows she’d been crying before she answered the call and hearing your parents cry is a pretty shitty experience in all sorts of ways. It’s proof that you’re considered an adult now, an adult capable of giving advice and comforting other adults, which is weird and awkward; especially when you have no idea what the hell is going on. It also means that Loki’s problems are probably even worse than she let on. Neither of his parents’ cars is in the garage when he arrives, which is disappointing after Frigga assured him she’d make dinner and he counted on her being there to mediate between him and Loki as if her saying she’d be there has ever been any guarantee that she’d actually be there during the past years. But then again, it’s not surprising considering that his Dad is defending a senator who’s on trial for drug trafficking and cases like this have always kept them away for days. As he strides into the house, Thor wonders not for the first time whether you can truly be a good person if you defend loaded ass criminals for a living. Asks himself what it really says about Odin that he refuses to understand why Thor isn’t interested in making money out of scumbags who should rot in the state pen and what it says about Frigga that she has kept managing this multi-million dollar circus for as long as she has.

“Hello?” Thor calls out but the house greets him with nothing but silence. There is no music, no television coming from anywhere. “Loki? Are you home? It’s me!”

No answer.

The hallway and large dining slash living room area downstairs are empty. He peers into the open plan kitchen but it’s empty too. He walks over to the fridge out of sheer habit, pulls out a package of pastrami, rips it open and shoves a batch into his mouth without bread, eying the knife and the cutting board on the kitchen island that has a few slices of lime and lemon on it as he chews. He keeps standing in the kitchen for a while, gazing out of the window and knowing he’s stalling because, deep down, he’s well aware that he put off coming here all summer because he doesn’t have any fucking clue how to deal with his brother. Not anymore. Not after Loki changed like he did. Not after he began to seal himself away and push Thor away from him after seeking out his company and his protection twenty-four-seven for the longest time. As he munches away on another few slices, he realizes that not having a clue how to deal with Loki isn’t the only thing holding him back. Nope, Thor has to admit to himself, he’s anxious. He’s fucking anxious. _Dammit_. Being scared of facing his mentally unstable teenage brother is definitely _not_ a good look for the Rebels’ fucking quarterback.

Thor heaves a sigh, gobbles the rest of pastrami and heads upstairs, leaving the empty package on the counter.

“Hello?” Thor calls out, knocking on Loki’s door. “It’s me! Open up!” No answer. “Loki?” Thor knocks again but there’s still no answer, so he pushes down the handle and opens the door. _Yikes_. He totally forgot that Loki played the emo card so hard that he repainted his room like a vault.

Loki is lying on his belly on his bed in his pajama pants and a shirt, apparently asleep on a book. “Hey,” says Thor, carefully nudging his brother’s shoulder, but Loki doesn’t even stir. That’s when Thor catches the stench of booze and walks around his brother’s bed. There’s a glass on the floor, almost empty, two slices of lemon and two slices of lime swimming in an inch of pale liquid. There’s an almost half-empty bottle of scotch too and a bottle of lime soda, and Thor doesn’t know why he’s so perplexed—angry—that Loki cut those lemons to make himself a fucking drink. _So, that’s it?_ _He’s drinking?_ If that was the case, why didn’t their Mom just tell him? That’s not a big deal. Okay, maybe it is because he’s fifteen and he isn’t moving but at least it’s nothing to be so damn secretive about.

“Hey,” Thor says again, shaking Loki more violently because the sight of his little brother lying there like this infuriates and spooks him at the same time. When there’s still no reaction except for a slurred, sleepy muttering kind of protest, Thor takes the book Loki’s been reading, _Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep_ , _what a highly relaxing bedtime reading_ , _NOT_ , slams it shut and softly knocks him upside the head with it.

This time, Loki reacts immediately, jerking into a sitting position like a greased lightning bolt.

“Rise and shine, bro,” Thor says, relieved at first that he isn’t in a coma, but then he realizes that Loki doesn’t really seem awake or focused. He just stares at him with huge panic-filled eyes for a few seconds as if he whacked him with a baseball bat or something, his breath coming in a heavy, shallow gasps. Thor holds up his hands, the book still in them. “Whoa, relax. I didn’t even hit you that hard.” Okay maybe he did because, according to a great many people, he can’t seem to do anything gently. “At least I didn’t mean to.”

Loki tries to stifle a mixture between a wail and a scream with moderate success, and squeezes his eyes shut.

“Shit, I-I’m sorry,” Thor stammers, not knowing what else to say because, _holy freaking fuck_ , Loki looks like a completely different person. He leaned towards the style before but now he looks like some actual emocore singer. He is even skinnier than he was a few weeks ago, he’s wearing heavy eye makeup and black nail polish and long, black sleeves and he kept growing his hair out even more too, slicking it back with so much oil that Thor is certain his brother will burst into flames if he lights a match next to him. It’s not only his appearance though. Something about his face is different too and it scares the hell out of Thor how much a person can change in a few weeks. Or months? He only lives forty minutes away when traffic isn’t horrible but it still must have been about two months since he last set foot into the house, maybe even more. He thought about stopping by several times during summer break but, with Loki acting like a total asshole every time he visits and Odin continuously losing what little interest he used to have in anything that doesn’t involve the firm, he’s never been tempted enough to make the drive. Much to his Mom’s disappointment, of course.

Loki opens his eyes again and narrows them at him in that angry, trying-to-be-extra-edgy sort of way.

“Everything alright?” Thor asks and slaps a smile onto his lips that he knows looks quite sheepish on him but has a heart-melting effect on some people. Okay, usually these are female people and not related to him, but it’s still worth a try. “You need a glass of water or a bucket or something?”

Thor knows he should have prepared himself for some kind of outburst after everything he’s been told but the tricky thing about reality is that, sometimes, it turns out to be even worse than your worst expectations. “I need _nothing_ from you! What the hell are you even doing here?” Loki snaps and scrambles off the bed onto his feet, his voice a hysterically angry, semi-slurred pitch. And here’s another thing about Loki. He has a penchant for dramatization that Thor couldn’t begin to explain even if someone held him at gunpoint. “Did Mom call you? Of course she did! What did she tell you, huh? That I need a fucking babysitter for as long as she’s tangled up in that case? I don’t believe this! Just get _the hell_ out of here! I don’t need anyone looking after me, especially not _you_!”

“You’re wasted at like six p.m.,” Thor points out. Okay actually he can’t be _that_ wasted because he only needed about thirty seconds to figure out that their Mom went all s _weetie-can-you-please-watch-your-brother-for-me-while-I-am-at-work_ on Thor last night without actually saying so and, what’s even worse, without him realizing it until this moment. _Fuck this whole fucking family_.

Loki draws a shaky breath, trying to steady himself. “Tell me what she told you.”

“Hey, calm down,” says Thor, trying to make his voice as soft as his usually so thunderous vocal cords allow him because it’s never been more obvious that Loki isn’t just a drama queen. He was still a kid the last time Thor saw him in such a state of uncontrolled hysteria.

“Tell me!” Loki screams at him.

“She didn’t tell me to look after you,” Thor tries. “If that’s what you’re worried about. I called—”

“You’re lying. You haven’t called in a very long time and you certainly didn’t just swoop in here because you wanted to see me or anything. So, tell me,” Loki demands and there is something about his voice that is different too, something that makes him sound older and much more threatening, something that doesn’t fit his shrimpy appearance at all. Or maybe that’s just the scotch.

“How do you expect me to call if you have me blocked, Lokes?” Thor crosses his arms in front of his chest when his brother gazes at him in surprise. “You always act like I’m this horrible person that doesn’t give a shit about you anymore even if _you_ are the one constantly telling _me_ that you want me out of your life. Do you really _blame_ me for not wanting a whole lot to do with you when you act like such a fuckhead all the time?”

Thor’s words succeed in taking all the fight out of his little brother. “What do you mean ‘blocked’?” Loki asks after a long pause. It isn’t until then that Thor realizes he hasn’t made eye contact once so far.

“Exactly what I said. What? You don’t remember that?” Thor half-jokes when Loki’s lips won’t close. “Well, I guess that’s what happens when you pickle your brain in booze.”

Loki flicks a glance at his phone lying on the bed, glaring at it as if it blocked Thor on its own, and suddenly he looks like he’s about to burst into tears. From one second to the next, there’s only maybe thirty percent asshole left. The remaining seventy percent are the vulnerable fragileness Thor remembers from when they were kids. He stretches out his hand on impulse, reaching for Loki’s shoulder. When Loki doesn’t bolt, he squeezes it and presses him back down as gently as he can, seating himself down next to him on the bed. “Look, I’m sorry for waking you up like that,” Thor mumbles. “That wasn’t cool but I—”

“You can’t fool me, brother,” Loki whispers, still refusing to look him in the eye, and his tone is almost pleading. “You came home to check on me. Please, just tell me why.”

Thor blows out a breath because he hasn’t been able to lie to his brother or even tell him a fib since Loki was six. “Jane told me about the panic attack you had in school yesterday. I called Mom afterwards, yes, but she didn’t ask me to stop by. I came because I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

Loki locks eyes with him then, drilling his green gaze into Thor’s in search for any more hidden truths. “She must have said something.”

“Just that you’re having mental health issues.”

Loki’s face is almost as pale as the white in his eyes. “She said that?”

“She tried to sugarcoat it by saying you were sick but, even if that’s what you tend to think, I’m not a complete idiot, Lokes. She didn’t tell me anything else though. Mainly because I think she has no fucking clue what’s actually going on,” Thor replies and Loki seems to accept this as the truth. He relaxes somewhat and his facial expression smoothens a little. “So, what’s up with that ridiculous hair?” Thor asks in an attempt to diffuse the situation, reaching for a strand to test its stickiness. “You look like a damn Christmas tree. And since when are you wearing make-up?”

Loki looks away again, mumbling, “Since it occurred to me that it’s not quite fair that only females get to cover up their dermal imperfections.”

“Dermal imperfections?” Thor echoes, stunned by his brother’s choice of words and his suddenly much softer tone.

Loki shrugs. “Skin blemishes and such.”

“What skin blemishes?” Thor asks. “You’re fifteen and your skin is like white porcelain.”

“My skin is like white porcelain?” Loki snorts, bursting into breathy, drunken laughter. “That has to be the weirdest thing you ever said to my face.”

“You’re probably right about that,” laughs Thor and they actually manage to giggle in sync for a very short moment. He tries to make eye contact again and this time, Loki does not hesitate to look at him even if he seems almost shy. “Look, I’m _really_ sorry for barging in here like that. Let’s just go get something to eat and catch up, okay?”

Loki inhales and exhales sharply, his brow twisting into a frown. “No, you gotta go,” he whispers and then stands up again.

“What? Why?” Thor asks, surprised because, like the gullible dumbass that he is sometimes, he just assumed that they were good now. “Can’t we just—”

“No,” Loki snaps, that weird edge returning to his voice. “Your company isn’t wanted in this room.”

Hearing his brother speak like this, it is damn near impossible to believe either Frigga or Jane that Loki missed him or tried to reach out to him. This Loki here doesn’t care about him anymore. “Come on, please,” Thor begs, benevolently ignoring the fact that there was a time when his company was wanted in this room around the clock because Loki just showed him a glimpse of the little brother he was before he turned into this unapproachable asshole. The little brother who didn’t despise him and didn’t spit venom into his face whenever he opened his mouth. The little brother who needed him. The little brother he really, really misses sometimes. “Do you have to be like this all the time? Why can’t we just hang out? Like, order a pizza or something because I’m fucking starving and it doesn’t look like we get dinner anytime soon.”

Loki stares at him as if he just suggested they should burn the whole house down. “Please don’t tell me you still haven’t figured out how to prepare your own dinner,” he says eventually as he looks down on him sitting on the bed, his voice dripping with the kind of contempt that pushes all the wrong buttons. “Of course I have,” Thor protests even though his dinners generally don’t involve an awful lot of cooking, “but that’s not the point. You make it sound as if you can’t even hang out with me anymore.”

“You’re serious?” Loki looks at him as if Thor is the one acting crazy. “You just wanna ‘hang out’? Like we’re still kids and stuff? Like nothing ever happened?”

“Because nothing _did_ happen!” Thor protests, jolting to his feet as well. “And it irritates the fucking hell out of me that you think otherwise!”

Loki looks genuinely surprised for a moment and then he just shrugs. _That fucking shrug that is irritating as hell_. “Well, that’s your problem, I guess.”

“Just tell me what I did wrong, for fuck’s sake!” Thor demands, his temper exploding inside of him. That fucking temper he inherited from his Dad that is a bitch to control. “Let me apologize or … I don’t know. Just _tell me_!” Loki shakes his head and, suddenly, it seems as if both brothers are there at once. The one that needs him and the one that wants to rip his head off. “You can’t even tell me.” Thor huffs a laugh. “Honestly, if there was something I did, you’d be able to tell me.”

“It’s nothing you did,” Loki says coolly. “It’s who you are. You’re not the kind of person I want to spend any of my time with.”

His time. _His fucking time_! After everything Thor did for him, after all the playdates and later real dates and parties he cancelled to entertain that little basket case, after all the nightmares and hysterical crying fits he helped him through, this Loki here won’t even take the time to have a fucking pizza with him? “Screw you, you ungrateful little prick,” Thor explodes. He grabs Loki by the shoulders, trying to shake some sense into the stubborn punk. “Just drop the attitude and tell me what the hell your problem is!”

“ _You_ are my problem!” Loki yells back, shoving him in the chest. Even though his brother isn’t particularly strong and he’s still swaying from the booze, his resistance surprises Thor and he trips backwards, letting go of Loki’s shoulders. Loki takes a step forward and pushes him again. And again. And again. “You need to _leave_ ,” Loki gasps, his balled fists hitting Thor’s chest.

“Hey, calm down! You’re drunk!” Thor yells at him as if telling someone they’re drunk will magically sober them up. Some things people commonly say to each other aren’t really _that_ helpful, are they?

“This is no longer your house!” Loki screeches and shoves him again, surprisingly violently this time.

“Stop it,” Thor yells back, catching at his brother’s rapidly flying fists. He grabs them and presses them together in front of his chest inside his own hands. “You’re overreacting. Just calm down, okay? Relax!” And yes, shouting at someone to relax is another one of those really, really unhelpful conversational strategies.

“You can’t stay here,” Loki whispers as he tries to free his hands out of Thor’s iron grip, his entire face quivering. Taken aback by how little either his imagination or his Mom’s words could have prepared him for what Loki is actually going through, Thor tries to draw a deep breath to calm himself down. Nope, this definitely isn’t just drama. Loki is scared out of his fucking mind. For whatever reason, he’s fucking scared of his own brother being there. “Why not?” Thor asks, trying to make his voice softer again despite the anger boiling inside of him.

“Because I don’t want you here,” Loki pants before he explodes into another fit of hysteria. “ _Get_. _The_. _Hell_. _Out_. _Of_. _My_. _Room_!”

Thor lets go of his brother’s hands because he couldn’t talk him back down from this level of psyched up even if he was a patient person. He doesn’t even think Frigga would be able to do that right now, which is probably why she’s so desperate. “Alright, I’ll leave you alone,” Thor concedes. “But I’m taking the booze.”

 _Holy shit_ , thinks Thor as he softly closes the door behind him. _Holy fucking shit_.

* * *

As soon as the door clicks shut behind his brother, Loki collapses back onto his bed and buries his face in the pillows to stifle a scream. _Can’t let Thor hear him scream_ , _no_ , _not again_ , _messed up enough_. He’s in that weird state where he’s still drunk but has stopped drinking long enough for the hangover to start making itself noticeable. Not that he really cares about his dry mouth or the headache creeping up on his temples, though.

 _Thor_.

What he cares about is Thor.

If Loki hasn’t totally lost it, his brother is really here. He can’t be a hundred percent sure of that because he’s been doing nothing except for losing it the whole day after his Mom left the house until he sneaked into his Dad’s home office at some point to power down the machinery inside his head with five-hundred-dollar scotch. Or maybe he subconsciously decided to get shitfaced to show his Mom what happens if she leaves him to his own devices but he doesn’t have the presence of mind to think about how that’d make him even more of a pathetic, attention-seeking little brat than he suspected before. It doesn’t matter right now anyway, though. His Mom isn’t here. Thor is. He can hear him outside, walking past his door and down the stairs, and even if he came here to babysit because their Mom asked him to, it doesn’t matter to Loki because Frigga called Thor before and he didn’t come but now he did. He cares.

That’s all that matters.

 _He doesn’t_.

He does. And Loki ruined everything. He tried not to. He tried very, very hard to stay in control long enough to tell Thor to grab the phone and order a pizza and pick a movie but, unfortunately, it’s so much harder to fight himself when he’s wasted and now Thor will undoubtedly think he’s crazy. _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_. Not that he isn’t crazy, _of course he is_ , he’s a fucking lunatic freak, but Thor wasn’t supposed to know that. Thor wasn’t supposed to see him like this, wasn’t supposed to hear The Voices.

_Brother …_

Loki sobs and bites his lip so hard he tastes blood to stifle the crying fit. He feels empty and hollow, almost carved out, and his heart hurts. He’s pretty sure he’s falling apart for real this time, not like mental building bricks collapsing, no, he thinks he can actually feel his physical body crumbling away. Everything hurts. He is almost too exhausted to breathe. Even something as basic as trying to keep his body functioning fucking hurts.

He lies for a while, unmoving, thinking about that pizza he could’ve had with his brother if he’d just tried a little harder.

 _You can still have it_. _Just get up_ _and tell him you’re sorry_. _He’ll understand_. _He knows you’re drunk_. _He won’t be upset_.

Loki wants to.

 _No_.

He tries to move but he has no access to his motor cortex.

 _I won’t let him hurt you again_.

He didn’t—

 _Don’t bullshit yourself_. _You can still feel the pain in your arm from where he grabbed you with that huge ass football ring on his finger, can’t you? Because **I** can_.

Loki can too but it doesn’t matter because he’s hurting himself as well, isn’t he, yes, he’s fucking cutting into his own damn flesh with razor blades all the time. Thor can hurt him all he wants because what he does to himself is far worse and that isn’t even the point because Thor wouldn’t have … “He only d-did that because of you. I would’ve just … This is all your fault,” Loki whispers. He tries to reach for his phone and, this time, his arm obeys. He scrolls through his chats. Can’t find Thor’s name. He panics. Maybe that’s because his vision is blurry. He squints, tries again. No Thor. His heart stumbles in his chest. He searches his contacts list next but his brother’s name isn’t in it anymore. It’s like he’s been deleted from his life. He panics again. “You did this.”

 _I’m protecting you_.

“You’re n-not protecting me,” Loki whimpers, his eyelids fluttering shut again because keeping this up is really fucking exhausting with that much scotch muddying the waters of his consciousness. “You’re pushing him away. You’re p-pushing ... everyone away. Y-you are the reason I’m a-always alone … You’re …”

Sleep begins to pull him deeper. Sleep is nice. No one can hurt him when he’s asleep. His mind is quiet when he’s asleep. Sleep is nice.

No, he can’t go back to sleep. He needs to get up, needs to find Thor, needs to apologize, _I’m sorry_ , _brother_ , _you’re not a bad person_ , _I didn’t mean to insult you_ , _I love you_ , _brother_ , _please come back_ , _please help me_ , _please make it stop_ , he needs to clear things up, needs to stop being such a fucking pussy, needs to grow some balls, needs to …

Sleep.

Worn out by mental exhaustion and intoxication, Loki sinks back into slumber and the last thought he catches before consciousness slips away from him again is about the allegory of the cave, making him wonder if, all his life, his brother’s love has been nothing more than a shadow cast on a wall of stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Loki's slowly coming undone, mainly because a) his therapist asked him to acknowledge the voices, which triggered a lot more conversations with them, and b) the first of the traumatic memories that are buried inside his brain resurfaced when he broke down in school. There's still a lot more to uncover, so brace yourselves. It's not going to be an easy ride. But an easy ride would be boring as hell and it wouldn't be me writing it. Also: Loki still doesn't know he's adopted *winks in evil* That said, stay tuned. The next chapter will shed more light on Thor's role in the family and his relationship with their parents. 
> 
> See you soon, I hope xxx


	14. Three hours late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Odin and Frigga come home after work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the last chapter(s) have been quite intense, so here's Thor dealing with his parents. Not that this is not also intense because, you know, this family is just messed up but at least this chapter has no Loki meltdown sequences.

Frigga’s knees almost give out when she sets foot into the house. She hasn’t slept since she dozed off by Loki’s side the previous night because her concern for her son and the aggravated state Odin was in when he came home kept her awake until she heard the shower go on in Loki’s bathroom and scrambled out of bed to make breakfast for him. Even though this hasn’t been the first time that an unforeseen development in a high-profile case kept her on her toes for this many hours without sleep, she has never experienced this type of exhaustion before. But then again, she isn’t getting any younger and when it did happen before, she didn’t also have to worry about Loki’s declining mental health and Thor’s future and what might happen if they saw each other again and whether she should tell Loki that his brother was going to stop by. The previous night, she decided not to tell Loki that Thor was going to come over for dinner because she didn’t want to upset him in case Thor changed his mind at the last minute. Not that any of this matters anymore because it’s past eight and Thor’s red Tesla is parked out front. Unless Loki suddenly changed his ways and actually went out, they already ran into each other. Frigga can feel the mental exhaustion resulting from her guilt over two broken promises as much as she can feel the physical exhaustion in every single one of her bones. And the fact that she wasn’t able to get a hold of either one of them when she tried to call them throughout the day hasn’t exactly lessened her apprehension.

“Hello?” Frigga calls out but the house greets her with a silent emptiness. “Is anybody home?” She peers into the living and dining room area but there's nothing to see except for an empty pizza box on the couch table. She checks outside but they aren’t in the yard either. She climbs the stairs then, calling out her sons’ names respectively, but receives no answer.

Drawing a sharp breath, she knocks on Loki’s door. Nothing. Thor has left the door to his room ajar but there is no sign of him except for his duffel bag that he threw onto the bed, which lifts her spirits at least a little because he surely means to come back if his things and his car are still here. _Maybe they went out together_ , she muses silently, fully aware that this thought is naïve at best.

She knocks on Loki’s door again and then pushes down the handle when she still doesn’t receive a response. Loki is lying on his bed fully dressed and rolled up into such a tiny ball that she wonders how he continuously manages to make his almost five feet nine look so small. She approaches the bed, carefully sits down and reaches for his face. As soon as her palm touches his skin, she feels that he is drenched in sweat that is glistering on his forehead and cheeks and above his lip. When Frigga wipes it away, a slight tremor runs through Loki’s body and he shivers, curling up even tighter and mewling in his sleep. And when she lowers her head to kiss the crown of his head, she smells the un-metabolized liquor on his breath.

“Shshshsh, I’m here now, honey,” whispers Frigga. She pulls a blanket over him and tucks him in, rubbing his back. Even though he begins to murmur wordlessly in his sleep, he doesn’t wake up and her stomach clenches when she realizes how much he wanted her, _needed_ her, to stay this morning despite assuring her that he was going to be fine. Of course she knew that she shouldn’t have left for work with her son this upset but, then again, Loki has this ability to convincingly remind her how she’ll kindle Odin’s temper if she “pampers him too much” and how Odin will eventually take his frustration out on him if she neglects her duties at the firm because of him. Which is why she ultimately decided to take care of her son by going to work and humoring her husband to keep him from getting mad at Loki instead of actually taking care of him in the way she should have. Which is also utterly wrong in so many ways and evidence enough that something in this house will have to change. That _she_ will have to change.

Frigga remains seated on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, stroking Loki’s head, and then leaves her son’s room to let him sleep in peace. Walking down the stairs, it occurs to her where Thor might have gone without his car. She crosses the hallway, opens the door leading into the basement and walks down another flight of stairs.

She finds her eldest in the gym at the far end. He doesn’t notice her right away because he is raining his fists down on a punching bag with loud groans, which gives her a chance to lurk in the doorway and stare at him for a moment. Even though she reprimanded Odin for the same thing numerous times, her mind instinctively compares Loki’s sickly pale skin and skinny frame to the sight of her eldest in his black shorts and his red, sleeveless shirt. Thor built up even more muscle since the beginning of summer and they’re flexing with every punch, revealing a biceps which rivals that of the ripped actor starring in the new action flick advertised all over town. Apart from that, he’s flaunting an even bronze tan from head to toe and his now slightly shorter dark blond hair is streaked with light blond highlights that he slightly disheveled with gel. His entire appearance, thinks Frigga, gives him a model-for-a-surfer-magazine-cover kind of look and seeing just how _healthy_ he looks in contrast to his brother fills her aching heart with joy.

After a few moments, Thor leaves the punching bag alone and turns to face her.

“Hey,” Frigga says softly as she approaches.

“You’re late,” Thor grumbles, the veins in his neck and at his temples throbbing with anger. “You’re, like, _three hours_ late.”

“I know,” Frigga sighs, hesitantly stretching out her hand. Thor narrows his eyes at her but doesn’t jerk away as Loki almost always does, so she reaches for his face and cups his cheek. “Work has been … Never mind. I know that’s not an excuse.”

“It’s not,” Thor replies.

“I’m sorry.” She exhales a breath and runs her hand through his hair. “But please know how glad I am that you’re here. I’ve missed you so much.”

“So you said,” says Thor and he isn’t even trying to mask his anger and his resentment.

“You look really great,” Frigga tries.

“I know. You look really _awful_ though,” Thor replies in his typical candid fashion and a bit of her apprehension melts away in an instant because Thor has this special ability to put people at ease with his voice even after saying something rude, which couldn’t have come from either her or Odin. Before she has a chance to reply or ask him how he is, though, he starts yelling at her. “And you’re not the only one. Seriously, Mom, what the _hell_ is going on with Loki and for how long has he been like this? He looks like a ghost and he totally lost his fucking marbles!”

Frigga’s heart sinks. “Did you talk to him?”

“I tried,” Thor rumbles, his voice like a thunderstorm, “but he was already fucking loaded when I got here, passed out on his bed. Emptied half a bottle of Dad’s scotch. Well, at least I think it’s Dad’s because I googled the brand and it’s expensive as fuck.” She knew he’d been drinking but hearing the _amount_ of alcohol Loki drank in her absence makes her feel sick to her stomach. “And when I woke him up,” says Thor, “he was like … Fuck, I don’t even know what the hell that was.”

Frigga tries to collect herself, stifling the urge to draw attention to his overabundant use of expletives. “Did you have a fight?”

“Of course we had a fight,” Thor snaps and she wonders why she even asked.

“Look, why don’t we go upstairs?” asks Frigga. “Your Dad is on his way too and he’s bringing dinner.” She didn’t expect her husband to react at all but Odin actually surprised her by saying he was going to “clock out in a minute” as well and get something from the family’s favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner when, on her way out, she told him that Thor had told her he’d stop by.

Thor looks unimpressed. “I already ate.”

“I saw,” says Frigga with a glance at his muscles. “But when did that ever stop you?” A smile tugs at the corners of his lips and she can see that he has to put some effort into not letting it show. She reaches for his arm, cupping his biceps. “You need a lot of calories for this, don’t you? How much do you weigh now?”

This time, his entire face lights up with a proud smile. “Going on two-hundred.”

“Wow.”

“But you don’t have to butter me up, okay?” Thor says with that particular air of confidence bordering on arrogance swirling around him that definitely comes from his father. “I know how I look.”

“Let’s just catch up, okay?” Frigga pleads. “I want to know everything and I promise you I’ll tell you what’s going on with your brother.”

Thor flares his nostrils but then he nods his agreement, reaches for the towel he draped over the rowing machine and tosses it around his neck. “You should be careful with what you promise these days though,” he remarks pointedly. “You know that, right?”

Even though her son’s words hurt no less than one of his punches would have hurt, she knows he’s right. “I do. But please, let me make it up to you.”

* * *

“I know that sometimes Loki doesn’t really appear to be … himself anymore,” Frigga begins after they’ve sat down on the couch and Thor made it clear he wasn’t interested in discussing his own life until she told him what was really going on as if she knew. _God_ , _if only she knew_. “I know he’s—”

“He acted like a complete lunatic,” Thor cuts her off, his temper flaring again. “You should’ve seen him. One second he threw hate at me, then he looked like a child about to cry, then he laughed and then he punched me in the chest, tried to shove me out of his room and hysterically screamed in my face. I mean, he was wasted, yes, but I’m in college, Mom. I see wasted people every day and nobody’s ever acted this _crazy_.”

“I’ve seen him, believe me,” says Frigga. “I live here.” Thor huffs in response to the subtle accusation she hasn’t even meant to come out. “He’s been experiencing these rapid mood swings and sudden intense rage reactions for a while now,” she relents then because the past days have convinced her that keeping up the lies and the secrecy won’t help Loki heal. “It’s why I took him to therapy. That and because he’s exhibiting a lot of self-destructive tendencies such as drinking and harming himself in … other ways.”

“What other ways?” Thor asks and then he just explodes when she pauses for too long, springing to his feet and starting to pace the room. “If you still expect me to swoop in here and take care of Loki whenever you’re stuck at the firm, fine, I’ll do it, but the least you can do is tell me what’s really going on because how am I supposed to deal with him if I don’t have all the information? Either you tell me the truth _now_ or I’m out of here again! Your choice.”

“I didn’t _expect_ you to _take care_ of him,” Frigga begins but then it dawns on her that wanting Thor to come home because she hoped Loki would feel a little better if he saw him again and because she knew it would put her at ease is one of the definitions of taking care of someone. Her stomach churns when she realizes that her son’s words are true. She has been hoping all day that Thor would raise his little brother’s crushed spirits.

Thor has crossed his arms for emphasis, ignoring her sorry attempt at self-defense. “What’s it gonna be, Mom?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” says Frigga. “I know I always relied on you protecting him a little too much.” Thor flares his nostrils again as her mind takes her back to the times he used to build magical pillow forts that kept monsters and demons away for Loki in the middle of the night whenever he suffered a sleep terror episode and woke up shaking, and how Thor huddled him close inside them until he calmed down. After Thor did that once when the boys stayed with their nanny overnight, nothing and nobody else would soothe him. Even if Frigga tried to rock Loki back to sleep when it happened again after this, he wouldn’t accept anything else except for Thor’s magical pillow forts until he was seven. What a burden she unwittingly placed on her eldest. “I know I often acted selfishly and unfair and I demanded a lot from you where Loki was concerned, and there’s no way I can take any of it back. But please know that I am sorry. Please?” She pats the couch for emphasis and her son reluctantly plops back down next to her, his temper dissipating into the air like air streaming out of a balloon.

“Why does Loki have to _be_ like this, Mom?” Thor asks, his anger replaced by the same sadness and despair she knows only too well. “Why can he not just grow out of the crazy and be okay?”

His words almost bring tears to her eyes but she forces herself to remain calm. “The therapist we spoke to recently thinks it’s very likely that your brother experienced childhood trauma and that he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress. It’d explain his urge to self-destruct, his inability to control complex emotions and the dissociative episodes he’s been experiencing along with anything else.” She exhales a breath. Her son’s jaw has dropped, which makes him look as incredulous as she probably looked when she first heard the diagnosis. “Now you know what’s going on.”

“Post-traumatic stress?” Thor echoes with an all too familiar edge of almost ridiculing disbelief to his voice. “You serious? From _what_?”

Frigga shrugs even though she has some ideas that she can’t discuss with him until Loki knows the truth. “A combination of factors, probably. Emotional neglect. Abandonment. Violence. Bullying. We don’t know yet.”

“Whoa, hold on. What the hell are you talking about? This is bullshit. Loki wasn’t abandoned or neglected.”

“No? Then why did you just, rightfully, accuse me of abandoning him?” Frigga asks back.

“That’s not the kind of abandonment shrinks mean when they talk about abandonment,” Thor protests.

“Oh, really?” Frigga can’t prevent a faint, tired smirk from creeping onto her lips. “Since when are you an expert?”

“I’m not. It’s just …” Thor exhales. “I mean, come on, Mom, these are kinda big words. Neglect and violence. What _violence_?”

“The violent assaults he experiences in school, for example,” Frigga continues, postponing the talk about whatever his father did to him and Loki to a time when Odin won’t be likely to walk through the door any minute. “Other students verbally abuse him, physically attack him when he uses the bathroom, steal his homework, lock him up and all of that started as soon as he came to Infinity High.” She lowers her voice, trying to make her next words sound as neutral as she possibly can. “But you knew about that, didn’t you?”

“I had no idea!” Thor looks horrified and, in his aggravated state, he takes offense anyway. “What are you trying to say, Mom?”

“Nothing, I just want to kn—”

Thor’s eyes are flickering dangerously. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“No,” Frigga insists yet maybe she is. “But you told me that you knew people tried to bother him and you didn’t tell me back then. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Thor’s fists are clenching. “Because I didn’t wanna worry you. You always lose your shit when it comes to Loki, so I took care of it myself.” His teeth begin to pull at his lower lip. “Or so I thought.”

“Care to elaborate what exactly ‘taking care of it’ means?” Frigga asks even though she isn’t sure she wants to hear the answer.

“There was this freshman kid, Erik Stevens,” Thor begins. “He tried to push Loki around because, of course, Loki made an easy target when he came to Infinity. Nobody likes academic overachievers and with him being so small and skinny, he was the most obvious student to pick on I guess. When I saw that little jerk lay hands on Loki one day, I dragged him outside and gave him a taste of what would happen to him if he ever touched my little brother again.”

Alarm sprouts in the pit of her stomach. “You gave him a taste? What does that mean?” Frigga asks but Thor only shrugs, breathing out his anger. “Don’t tell me you beat him up.” Thor shrugs again and even if that boy hurt her son, the image her mind comes up with is deeply unsettling. “You beat up a freshman four years younger than you with all those muscles?”

Another shrug. “It was a gentle beating. Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Thor complains when he sees her mouth gape open in response to his questionable choice of words. “That’s what you always wanted me to do, isn’t it? Protect Loki? Defend him? So, that’s what I did,” Thor explains almost proudly as if she asked him to go around and physically hurt other students on Loki’s behalf.

“You can’t just beat other people up, Thor,” Frigga reprimands her eldest.

Her son looks dumbstruck. “Why not? You’re defending people who’ve done a lot worse, so what’s your problem? If they deserve a lawyer, why would you want me to feel bad about what I did to protect my brother and your little baby? Isn’t that, like, my best defense?”

It isn’t until then that Frigga fully realizes what she has done by unwittingly forcing him into the role of Loki’s protector and, as she begins to understand, it also dawns on her why their relationship might have turned into what it is now. “Look, honey, we’re not in court,” Frigga begins, echoing the words Loki said to her this morning. “And violence is never a solution. Your father doesn’t defend these people because he’s approving of their crimes.”

“No, he’s doing it for the shit tons of cash,” Thor grumbles.

“If you have a problem with the cash, I could always cut back your allowance and trade your car for a model closer to the one I drove when I was in college, you know,” Frigga teases him because no matter how much he, maybe rightfully, criticizes their profession at times, he wouldn’t trade the lifestyle their jobs have afforded him for anything. 

“You know that’s not the point, right?” Thor grumbles. “The point is that these people are criminals. The senator that kept you away all day is a _criminal_. He snuggled drugs into the country and onto the streets, killing hundreds of innocent people. Teenagers aren’t criminals just because they beat each other up. It’s what we do. It’s how he communicate.”

He is right and his words leave a sour taste on her tongue. But then again, he’s also wrong. “Yeah, well, in this case, your attempt at communication failed because Erik Stevens is still terrorizing your brother.”

“And you’re saying that this is my fault?” Thor yells even if she didn’t mean it like this at all. “I told Loki if that Stevens kid or anyone else ever bothered him again, he’d just have to tell me and I’d take care of it. He never said anything when I asked him how school was. That’s not my problem and not my fault! He didn’t say anything, so I thought everything was fine. That’s on _him_ , okay? Not me!”

“Hey, calm down. I never said—”

“If he _had_ told me, I would’ve broken every bone in that asshole’s body!”

Frigga’s heart skips at least one beat. “Are you serious?”

Thor draws himself to his full six feet three in a fluster. “Of course I am serious!”

“What the hell has gotten into you?” Frigga screams, her patience finally snapping. “I just told you I don’t want you to resort to viol—”

“Hey!” Odin’s voice booms out across the room, startling them both. Her husband places a family order of Chinese take-away on the dining room table and strides towards them, commanding respect and attention with every step as he always does. “What on earth is going on here?”

Frigga clears her throat. “We were just talking about—”

“Can’t you blow off enough of your steam on the football field, son?” Odin bellows, ignoring her entirely. “Do you have to come here and scream at your mother after not showing your face for the whole summer?”

“No, I …” Thor gulps. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“You should be,” Odin rumbles, blissfully oblivious to the fact that his own genes have brought forth Thor’s temper. God, how alike they sound sometimes. “We didn’t raise you to be a brute who brags about breaking other people’s bones.”

“I wasn’t bragging,” Thor defends himself. “I was just …”

Odin raises his eyebrows at him. “Bragging?”

Thor gives a defeated half-shrug.

“I thought so,” says Odin but then, much to Frigga’s surprise, he almost affectionately squeezes their son’s shoulder. “However, I’m still glad you finally decided to grace us with your presence once again.” Thor exhales the last whiffs of his anger in a long breath. “Now, let’s have dinner before it gets cold, shall we? I still have some work to do afterwards. Where is your brother?”

“He’s—”

“He’s upstairs,” Frigga chimes in, talking over her son, whose eyebrows are shooting up in surprise at the urgency in her tone.

“Alright, I’m going to get him,” says Odin. “I need to get out of this suit anyway.”

“He’s asleep. He isn’t feeling well,” says Frigga, holding her husband back by the wrist. “I’m going to bring him some dinner later. Let’s just sit down, okay?”

Odin narrows his eyes at her, probably sensing the lie that technically isn’t one. Thor’s gaze travels from her to her husband and back to her and he looks as if he’s waiting for the proverbial bomb to drop. For a few heartbeats, it seems as if Odin is indeed going to drop it but then his shoulders slump in defeat and disappointment. “What is it this time?”

The answer comes from upstairs in the form of a scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! :)


	15. I got this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor is trying to figure out what the hell has been going on in his absence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll get another Loki POV bit in the beginning and it was kinda intense to write it, so maybe brace yourselves, I don't know.
> 
> As for the rest, I was like "AJRHHAJSDHSDJKSK" all through this chapter when I wrote Odin and I'm curious to read what you think. I also really, really want to apologize for not replying to some of your comments. I know I've been very negligent in regard to that type of thing because my own mental health is shit right now but please know that, everytime you leave me some nice words, you make my day so much better and I want to thank everyone who has been reading/kudo-ing/commenting so far. You are the best <33

Loki is, once again, trapped in that weird dreamscape where he can see and talk to the people belonging to The Voices but this time, the contours of his surroundings are a lot sharper, which is remarkable really, considering that he drank that much scotch. Or maybe he can see his mental world more clearly because of the scotch. Mind-altering substance and all that shit. You never know. Fact is—as long as one can speak of facts where the screwed up logic of human dreams is concerned—he is standing in a cave with a waterfall behind him and a passage the approximate size of a high tunnel greenhouse leading to the cave’s mouth, which reveals glimpses into a rich green landscape reminiscent of jungle vegetation. It’s not far, maybe eighty feet, maybe even less, but it might as well be as far as Pluto because there’s a man standing in the passage.

A man who gives Loki the scare of his life when he spots him leaning against the wall of the cave, arms crossed in front of his chest, glowering at him.

Loki trips backwards, almost stumbling. He doesn’t remember anything about him from the first dream except for his eyes but he instantly recognizes Nikias anyway. Though leaning towards androgynous, he is male, about twenty-five and six feet tall. He is wearing black pants, black leather boots and a black leather vest over a burgundy shirt along with a studded belt with two silver belt chains dangling from it. His white-silver-dyed hair sports a messy just-out-of-bed look and the eyes he still remembered after waking up last time are black as well, with a thin, fiery red ring separating the black of the pupil from the black of the iris that makes his eyes look like two pieces of hot coal glinting with veins of ember in a grill. Every fiber in his body is seething with the anger that sometimes bursts out of Loki’s body, terrifying his Mom half to death, and now that he senses it himself he understands why she is so afraid of that anger. Nikias is the living embodiment of a gargantuan cauldron bubbling in the pits of hell and Loki begins to suspect that he couldn’t ever let all this anger out; even if he were to live a thousand years. But by far the worst thing is that Loki knows how much of this anger is directed at him because he’s a weak, needy, pathetic little crybaby while the rest of it is directed at Thor. Loki doesn’t really understand what his problem with his brother is though. All he knows is that Nikias is convinced that Thor doesn’t care about him anymore and that he gets furious every time he realizes that Loki misses him.

He wants to ask Nikias why because Thor does care. He could feel it. Plus, if Thor says something, he generally means it because his brain is too slow to craft a believable lie or even a subterfuge in face-to-face communication, so he just blurts out the truth into people’s faces most of the time. If he says he cares, he does care. If he doesn’t care, he says he doesn’t. Thor is simple like that. And if Nikias really lived inside his head, he would know this, which means this is all just a truckload of bullshit. But bullshit or not, Nikias is terrifying as fuck and the fear takes all the words out of Loki’s mouth, leaving nothing but the nonverbal pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.

“You don’t need to ask,” says Nikias, his voice as sharp as a dragon fang. “I know what you’re thinking.” Loki gulps. “Think of this cave as the space where our consciousnesses converge.” 

“That is a metaphor, right?” Loki asks softly when he can finally bring his dream self to speak. _Of course it is_. _It has to be_. 

Nikias cackles. “You can’t be that smart if you still think so after everything that happened.” 

_You mean after you blocked Thor against my will_ , _screamed at him to leave my room against my will and starved my body for weeks because you hate food_?

“ _Our_ body,” corrects Nikias, his angry black gaze almost paralyzing him.

For a few moments, Loki is too scared to speak, or even fucking think, and when he finds his voice again, his words come out in a pathetic, frightened whisper. “Who are you really? And why are you in my head? Wh-what do you want from me?” 

“My role is simple really.” When Nikias starts walking towards him, Loki’s flight-or-fight response kicks in immediately. He tries to run, every nerve in his body is screaming at him to flee this mindfuck of a nightmare, but panic roots him to the spot until the other man is standing right in front of him and, _oh fuck no_ , _please just go away_ , _let me wake up_ , _I can’t deal with this_ , _please_ , _NO_ , _I NEED TO WAKE UP_ , actually takes Loki’s hands into his own. Astonishingly though, his voice is soft and almost fatherly when he continues. “You think about Thor every day and you’re convinced that if he’d be back in your life, he’d make you better and everything would be okay and that’s just not true because he doesn’t care about you the same—”

“He does,” Loki wails. “He came b—”

“He doesn’t care about you the same way you care about him,” Nikias yells, drowning out his words. “No one cares about you the same way you care about them! No one’s ever going to give you what you need! Don’t you _understand_?”

Tears spring to Loki’s eyes and it’s weird that he can feel them on his cheeks because, after all, he’s still _fucking_ _dreaming_ , right? “Wh-what is that even supposed to mean?”

“You’re too needy,” says Nikias. “Too weak. You need to learn to be alone.” He pokes Loki in the chest with his index finger. “Just look at you! Going on sixteen and still needing your mommy and your daddy and, most of all, your big brother, going crazy every time you’re alone! How do you expect anyone to ever be able to fill up that giant fucking hole of neediness inside of you? It’s like a black hole or a portal sucking everything into it but it’s never gonna be—”

“Enough,” booms another Voice from somewhere very, very far in the distance and its echo rattles the pebble on the ground. Nikias winces at the sound and instantly flees the cave and if even _he_ is scared of this other voice, that means … that means … _No_ , _no_ , _no_. Loki can’t handle this. His entire body is trembling and he can no longer tell if it’s out of fear or despair or sadness or because there’s this crushing feeling of helplessness, vulnerability, defenselessness that weighs him down and leaves him gulping for breath in between immature wails or screams or whatever noise is coming out of his mouth and he can’t move, _holy shit_ , he can’t move a muscle, he can’t run, and there’s nowhere to run to _anyway_ because, _for fuck’s sake_ , he is in a goddamn cave, knowing instinctively that the jungle is somehow the wrong direction and there’s no way out, no escape, _no_ , _WAIT_ , _THIS IS A DREAM, ISN’T IT_ , he isn’t sure, it feels too real to be a dream, realer than last time, much realer, and he’s panting, crying, sobbing, whimpering, _have to leave_ , _can’t stay here_ , _not a minute longer_ , _can’t breathe_ , _need to get home_ … _please_ , _someone come take me home_ …

* * *

“Loki!” Thor yells, his parents on his heels as he charges up the stairs. Despite all his resentment and all his anger, his body went into autopilot the second he heard Loki scream in anguish before even his Mom put her body in motion. When he barges into his brother’s room, Loki is thrashing in his bed and he is still screaming his fucking lungs out, his eyes widened in naked fucking terror, which is probably why doctors call them night _terrors_ in the first place. Before Frigga can hold him back, he’s crossed the room with two large strides and jumps onto his brother’s bed, pinning him down. “Wake up! You’re dreaming!”

“Thor, no!” Frigga whispers urgently, pulling him back by the shoulders once she finally caught up with him. “You’re not supposed to wake him up, remember?” 

He does and he reluctantly lets go but it’s still fucking hard to just sit there and do nothing. He kneels on the bed next to Loki’s flailing frame, biting his lower lip.

“He hasn’t had one of those in ages,” comes Odin’s voice from the doorway and Thor is surprised to hear the faint trace of concern in his voice.

“I know,” whispers Frigga as she sits down next to Loki on the other side of the bed, reaching for his hand. “It’s probably because of the alcohol.”

“The what?” Odin blares.

“Not now, Dad,” Thor snaps at him as Frigga takes Loki’s right hand in both of hers and brings it to her mouth, brushing her lips against Loki’s fingers. “Shshhh, honey, everything is fine. If you wake up, you’ll be safe, okay? We’ll be here, okay? Everything will be fine.”

“I’m just gonna,” Odin mumbles and then his voice trails off and he’s out of the door and Loki just keeps screaming. As far as Thor can recall, the night terrors only lasted a few minutes when he was a kid, but now, Loki won’t calm down even despite Frigga’s greatest efforts.

Odin comes back with a glass of water, which he hands to Thor before he leaves wordlessly and walks downstairs.

After a few minutes, Thor stands up, places the glass on the bookcase and starts pacing the length of Loki’s room, torn between blaming himself that he didn’t come home sooner and wishing he’d never made the drive. A few days ago, he was nothing but a carefree twenty-year-old college kid living his best life away from home and enjoying the hell out of not having to worry about his pain in the ass kid brother for once. He knows he has a right to his own life, a right to be his own person. He knows he technically isn’t responsible for his psychologically troubled little brother’s well-being because he’s just that, his older brother, not his parent or his legal guardian, but he still feels like an asshole for not giving a shit about him since he moved out. Well, he did give a shit but, apart from the fact that Loki turned himself into such an unlovable jerk, Thor has also been quite busy being the star on campus and a day only has twenty-four hours.

Eventually, after what feels like an hour in that state of paralyzing helplessness, Loki’s eyelids flutter shut and he sinks back into sleep just as he did when he was little. And just as they did when he was little, his eyes snap open again after a while and he glances around the room with huge green eyes, confusion stamped across his features, and then his body begins to tremble. It’s like a complete déjà-vu, as if five-year-old Loki is still trapped somewhere inside this teenage body. “Mom?”

“Yes, honey, I’m here,” purrs Frigga. “You’re safe, okay?”

A guttural sob tears loose from his chest. “I-is Thor still here? I-I …”

“I’m here,” says Thor from where he’s been leaning against the bookcase. He crosses the room and sits back down onto the bed, handing his brother the glass of water. “Drink this.”

Loki reaches for the glass with trembling hands. He needs both of them to bring it to his lips and drink the water and even then, he spills a few drops. “I-I’m sorry about what I said,” he whispers, searching for Thor’s eyes. His words still come out in a slur but this time, it’s more the slumberous exhaustion type of slur.

“It’s alright,” says Thor and he means it. No matter what happened earlier that evening, this Loki here is zero percent asshole and a hundred percent … Scared? Miserable? Troubled? Haunted? Whatever it is, it’s a hundred percent his brother and the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look in his eyes makes it clear that he needs Thor just as much as he did when he was a kid. It also takes Thor back to a time in his childhood where he was convinced that his brother’s heart couldn’t contain all his emotions for much longer and lived in constant fear that, one day, Loki would just explode, like a backpack filled with dynamite in a cartoon.

“I-I didn’t mean to,” Loki mumbles but he’s almost too exhausted to speak.

“It’s alright,” Thor says again. “It’s not your fault.” _It’s not your fault that you’re like this_.

“Look, why don’t you just go back to sleep, honey?” says Frigga. “You’re worn out. You guys can talk in the morning.”

“No,” Loki wails, startling her. Frigga’s gaze travels from Loki to Thor and back to Loki. “I-I need to talk to him now, b-before—”

“We can talk,” Thor cuts in. He locks eyes with Frigga, mouthing, “It’s alright, I got this.”

“Are you sure?” Frigga asks back, her lips moving silently.

“Yes, just go and have dinner.”

Frigga nods, reluctantly of course but she nods, and then she leaves the room, shutting the door behind her with a soft click. Loki locks eyes with him and Thor marvels at how green his brother’s eyes look sometimes because he’ll be damned if he ever understands why Loki is the only one in the family who has such brilliant green eyes. DNA really is a sneaky prankster sometimes.

“I-I didn’t mean what I said,” Loki says again.

“You were pretty wasted,” Thor offers.

Loki laughs weakly. “Since when is that an excuse? Look, sometimes I …” Tears spring to his eyes and he tries to wipe them away but it’s a pitiful attempt. “You’re mad, aren’t you?”

“No,” says Thor. “I mean yes, but not at you specifically. At least not right now.”

Loki’s facial muscles move as he tries to process this but then he seems to give up on it and instead asks him if he still cares.

“Of course,” says Thor, awkwardly squeezing his brother’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, right?”

“Then why didn’t you ever text me?”

“Because first you told me not to. You told me to stay out of your business, remember? And then, a couple of weeks ago, you blocked me.”

“You’re stupid if you think I meant that,” Loki says eventually but it’s not downright hostile or condescending. It’s more like he’s searching for anything to say that helps him keep the tears at bay but there’s nothing. He can’t stop crying. Thor rubs Loki’s arm. “Hey, you know I’m stupid,” he jokes.

Loki laughs but there’s a desperate edge to the sound. Whether it’s because of the booze or the night terror or his overall mental weariness Thor doesn’t know but it’s clear that Loki can’t put the mask he’s been wearing for the past months back on. He’s been stripped bare of every tiny last bit of self-control. This here is his baby brother, the little kid who once trusted him and wanted to play with him twenty-four-seven, begging him not to leave, not to go to his friends’ houses, hungering for scraps of his attention. Always hungering, even now. Always starving. But for once, he isn’t trying to deny himself what he really needs. “Can you maybe … stay for a while?”

“Yes, of course,” Thor repeats and he can’t even imagine how much effort it took his brother to ask that question out loud.

Loki’s eyes close as soon as Thor swings his legs onto the mattress. He rolls himself onto his side and curls up into a ball, his nose an inch from Thor’s thigh. He gulps. With Loki talking like his college professors most of the time, it’s all too easy to forget that his little brother is basically still a kid—and a fucking troubled kid at that. Loki looks so fragile, thinks Thor, almost like he could snap him in two if he hugged him too hard. He remembers what his Mom said about the bullying and how tightly he grabbed his shoulders earlier, and his intestines clench.

He pushes the thought away and focuses on the titles of the books in Loki’s shelf instead, silently repeating them in his mind until Loki falls back asleep about twenty minutes later.

* * *

“Is everything alright?” Frigga asks as soon as Thor descends the stairs to join his parents at the dinner table. Gosh, how old and tired she looks. They both look extremely old right now, Thor realizes, and he can’t even describe the feeling of uneasiness that blossoms in his chest. Just like when he heard his Mom cry, seeing them like this suddenly makes him aware that they can only take so much. And realizing that his parents have a breaking point as well makes him feel an awful lot like an adult; a feeling he doesn’t particularly enjoy.

“Yeah. He fell back asleep,” Thor mumbles as he slides onto a stool next to his Dad.

“Look, I really am sorry,” Frigga begins and the wretched look on her face feels like a knife twisting in Thor’s chest. “I didn’t realize that I was using you to get through to your brother.” She pauses and, in the silence following her words, Odin exhales an exasperated breath before he shoves a forkful of chicken chow mein into his mouth and chews loudly. “I’ve put his needs above yours and I shouldn’t have done that.” She reaches for his hand across the table, squeezing it. “I apologize.”

“It’s alright,” Thor assures her, squeezing back. “Unless, of course, you still blame me for not keeping the bullies off his back.”

“I don’t,” his Mom says. “I never did. I was just upset for a moment that you didn’t tell me a few years ago because I thought there was something I could have done if I had known but—”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Odin cuts her off. “Loki is picking fights wherever he goes. He’s provoking people on purpose. You know that.”

Frigga inhales a sharp breath.

“But it’s gotten worse, right?” Thor asks, everything that happened in the last four hours replaying in front of his inner eye. “I mean, he’s gotten worse and I just don’t understand. I kinda assumed he would’ve outgrown the worst by now but he’s ...”

Odin barks a laugh. “He’s growing _into_ it.”

“Yeah, it’s like … kinda like he’s going backwards,” Thor muses. “Like he’s not really growing up.”

His Dad takes a sip of wine. “Tell me about it.”

“He’s fifteen,” Frigga reminds him. “You weren’t exactly grown-up at that age.”

“But I didn’t snuggle up to anyone like a fucking toddler, did I?” Thor asks, then immediately corrects himself. “Like a toddler, sorry.”

Frigga deeply inhales once more. 

“Did your mother tell you about the ten-day suspension he incurred for showing up drunk to class?” Odin scoffs. “And that, instead of punishing him, she arrived at the conclusion that school is beneath him?”

 _His super smart little genius brother with his giant ass brain getting himself suspended from fucking High School?_ That’s really big news indeed.

“I never said—” begins Frigga but his Dad just talks over her again, the sarcasm in his voice as thick as The Fog. “She is going to find him a tutor that can ‘foster his intelligence’. If that goes as well as her search for a psychologist that can endure his tantrums, he’s going to live upstairs until he’s thirty-five.” He snorts. “And there goes my last chance of having someone take over the family business.”

“Just stop it!” Frigga yells, her flat hand slamming onto the table and startling them both. “I told you I’ve had enough of your dismissive attitude!” She searches for Thor’s gaze. “Jane told you what happened, didn’t she? It’s not safe for him to be in school right now and I don’t want him there. It’s triggering.”

“Of course an empty house isn’t triggering at all for someone with a boatload of abandonment issues,” Thor jibes before he can stop himself. “Oh wait, it is. That’s why he got wasted in your absence.”

All color drains from Frigga’s face. “I don’t believe this. You blame me. You both do.”

“I don’t think Loki’s issues are a question of blame because it’s no one’s fault that his brain is wired this weirdly.” Thor gives a half-shrug. “I do think that your priorities are a little off though and I don’t understand why you leave him here all day if he’s soooo easily triggered by … literally everything.”

Frigga draws a trembling breath, silently chewing on his allegations.

“See?” Odin almost casually takes a sip of wine. “That’s why I had to kick him out. He would’ve never started growing up in this house.”

“Wait, _what_?” Thor asks because, suddenly, nothing makes sense anymore and why the hell did he not just delete Jane’s text without reading it? He should never have come here. He should never have—

“You really thought I did it because you told me you didn’t care for the firm? How dense do you think I am, boy?” Odin flashes him a condescending smirk. “I always knew that. I just waited until you had the guts to live your own life and then I gave you a push out the door.”

“W-why?” Thor stammers, still unable to grasp even one coherent thought.

Odin jerks his head in the direction of the stairs. “Because Loki’s fits aren’t your responsibility, son.” He glowers at Frigga. “The only reason you didn’t straight up leave after graduating is because she had you convinced that you must look after your brother and even if we’d told you to move out, you wouldn’t have dared to disappoint her.”

 _Holy fuck_. For almost a year, he thought his Dad was a bitter old asshole while, in reality, he just tried to help him? Seriously? That thought needs a moment to sink in. A very long moment.

“I already apologized, didn’t I?” Frigga asks through clenched teeth. “I can’t change the past.”

Thor thinks about his brother curled up in a ball upstairs like a five-year-old kid needing his Mom. “No, but you can still change the future,” he points out without any real hope that she’ll take the bait but his Mom ends up surprising him.

“You’re right. I should focus on what’s really important from now on.” Frigga takes a deep breath before she locks eyes with Odin. “Which is why I’ll promote Chris to manager first thing tomorrow morning.”

The veins in his Dad’s neck begin to throb and Thor instinctively, subconsciously shifts his chair a few inches away from his father because no one wants to be near Odin when he flips his lid. “You’re serious?”

“Yes, I am serious. He’s been assistant manager long enough to handle the heat. I’ll work from home in a consulting capacity until Loki’s therapy is successful or I have recruited a new assistant manager for the firm that satisfies your unnaturally high expectations, depending on whatever comes first.”

“You really think staying at home will make a difference?” Odin snarls. “How is Loki ever supposed to learn to stand on his own two feet if you don’t let him deal with his problems on his own for once? Just think, woman! He has trouble in school, you decide he doesn’t have to go anymore. He has trouble being alone at home, you decide to drop out of your job. He won’t ever have a chance to grow up if you keep babying him like that! That boy is almost sixteen, for God’s sake! Just let him deal with his own shit!”

“But Dad—”

“Oh yes? Didn’t you just recently tell me that he has the emotional maturity of a five-year-old?” Frigga shouts. “Apart from that, you just made it clear once more that you are of the obsolete opinion that parenting is my responsibility alone because I am his _mother_ even though I work fulltime just as you do! Do you really expect me to be in two places at once? I am not a magician!”

Odin’s jaw works and he glares at her but he doesn’t explode. Instead, Frigga almost loses her shit. “I’ve had it up to here with your attitude because my priorities aren’t the only ones that are off, are they? It wouldn’t hurt Loki if you gave him the impression that he’s important to you at least every once in a while!”

“Are you done?” Odin sighs.

“No, I am not done!” Frigga yells.

“Well, _I_ am! I’m tired of you chewing my ear off about Loki’s lapses. You already had a son before he came along and it’d serve _you_ well to remember that at least every once in a while,” Odin warns her in a glacial voice that carries an unmistakable threat. Her face falls. A chill creeps down Thor’s spine because something about his father’s choice of words doesn’t sit right with him.

“Come on, son,” says Odin. “Enough about your brother. I want to know what you’ve been up to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, alcohol makes everything worse. Sleep or night terrors have been thought to be a children thing for the longest time but they can occur later on in life if you've experienced trauma; anxiety; depression; stress; and they definitely get worse if you drink/do drugs. That just as an afterthought. 
> 
> I couldn't help but include Frigga's "I'm not a magician" line by the way because, if we were in the MCU right now, she could have had an illusion spend time with Loki while she's busy at work or the other way around. But, sadly and fortunately, we don't have this opportunity right now, which is why she had to make a choice. And yes, she's still not really seeing Thor's perspective but even Thor himself isn't seeing his own perspective *sighs*
> 
> And damn, the manipulativeness in this house 😳


	16. You’ve been missing out on all this fun for months

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are cooking in the house of Odin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw abuse  
> tw death in a dream sequence  
> tw traumatic child birth  
> tw intense read ahead 
> 
> Yes, I am trying to live up to my reputation *quietly exits*

**_Saturday, September 21 st, 2019_ **

**_  
8 days to the incident_ **

  
_Run_.

Frigga knows she needs to run when she hears the doorbell, _needs_ to make haste, but the living room is endless and a strange, invisible force native to dream keeps her legs from moving forward as quickly as she needs to. _Loki_. She soundlessly screams his name because the dream took her voice too and so she wades forward through air as thick as mudflat, heart pounding. She needs to get to him before it’s too late. He’s waiting for her to rescue him, to pick him up, to cradle him to her chest, but he doesn’t know she’s coming because he can’t hear her scream. He’s alone, has been alone for God knows how long. He’s scared. He’s cold.

So cold.

She reaches the front door and there he is, wrapped up in a dirty blanket on the doorstep. He isn’t crying. He’s just lying there, eyes closed, lips slightly open, a faint blue tinge to his skin.

So cold.

She picks him up, rubs his small back, cradles him close, tries to warm him up.

He isn’t breathing.

He doesn’t wake up.

He never will.

She is holding a dead baby.

Frigga barely manages to stifle her scream when she startles awake, jerking into a sitting position. In her dreams, she always loses her boy. She leans against the backrest of her bed, panting. Next to her, Odin sleeps like a rock, as always oblivious to any noise except for his alarm. Frigga tries to compose herself, tries to remind herself that, even if there was no doorbell involved in the waking world sixteen years ago, Loki was still alive when she found him in that blanket. Frozen cold and barely breathing, barely holding on, but alive. Tries to remind herself that she saved his life by rushing him to the hospital. The nurses called his survival a miracle, speculating that he must be destined for great things one day.

She scrambles out of bed and tiptoes to his room to check on him. To make sure he’s still alive, still breathing. She hasn’t felt the need to do that in a long time, mainly because she hasn’t had that nightmare in a long time, but now her heart almost ruptures in her chest at the thought of him suffering alone in his room. Loki is still sleeping when she enters, curled up into a ball, snoring softly. Worried about cheating him out of the rest he needs so desperately, she fights the urge to sit down and cradle him. She watches him from the door for a while, her heart aching inside her chest because even if she saved his life, she never managed to give him health or peace of mind. She never managed to really save him because she didn’t read the signs that were glaring into her face all through his childhood because she wanted to believe so badly that his therapist was right. That Loki’s separation anxiety and his nightmares would fade. That he would grow out of them. That his intelligence would prevail against his emotions one day.

She wipes a tear away and leaves her son’s room. Doubting she’ll be able to go back to sleep after everything that happened, she makes herself comfortable on the living room couch with her tablet and begins to type out what happened sixteen years ago to email it to Dr. van Dyne.

Whatever she types sounds utterly wrong, however, and so she abandons the task in favor of staring out of the window where the first few lights of dawn are casting a smudgy grayish light over the black shapes in the backyard. As the horror of the nightmare slowly washes away, she feels the anger seething inside her stomach when she went to bed the previous night again. She is still furious with herself because she handled Loki’s breakdown in school so terribly and neglected her biological son because of her adopted son. Not that this categorization truly means anything to her. It never has. Even if she didn’t give birth to both of them, she still gave _life_ to both of them after all. They are both her sons. She never thought about them in any other way and it doesn’t matter because she is even more furious with Odin because he used her negligence to play her off against Thor and because he manipulated them all into believing he kicked Thor out because he’d decided against a career in law. She is furious because she fell for it. She is furious because he didn’t seek talks with her to call her out on her behavior and instead just single-handedly decided that Thor was to move out to live his own life. Even if he was right about that, he most certainly was, she has to admit to herself, she still can’t accept that he made such a decision without consulting her first. But then again, Odin probably knew she’d not exactly be thrilled by the idea and, seeing Thor now, seeing how healthy he looks and how seemingly effortlessly he’s easing into adulthood, she has to agree that her husband probably made the right call. Despite his announcement that he still had some work to do after dinner, Odin devoted his time and attention to Thor after they finished eating, encouraging him to tell them all about how well things are going for him. Focusing on Thor and recalling the sparkle in his eyes as he told them about college and the scouts and his victories on the football field now stills her racing thoughts and before she even realizes it, her eyelids are fluttering shut again.

She drifts off into sleep but then Odin comes striding down the stairs in a bathrobe thrown over his pajamas after what only feels like a few minutes later, startling her awake. She catches a brief glimpse of her husband but then closes her eyes again to avoid having to acknowledge his presence and listens to the sounds of him moving around in the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee before he sits down to work in his office.

He doesn’t last long.

Frigga hears a furious grunt before he clatters out of his office again and stomps back up the stairs, yelling Loki’s name, his voice like a roaring thunderstorm. The shirt incident still vivid in her mind, Frigga is on her feet in an instant. When she reaches Loki’s door, Odin has already stormed inside, grabbing their half-kneeling son by the shoulders. “D-dad? What’s going on?” Loki asks, his voice still a little sleepy. “What did I do?”

“Have you been in my office?” Odin hollers, his face a red mask of anger, his eyes almost popping out of his head.

“N-no,” Loki stammers.

“Get a hold of yourself,” Frigga shouts at her husband but, as always lately, he’s paying her no attention. “Let him go!”

“There are confidential files in there!” Odin shakes him violently. “Don’t lie to me!”

“Don’t you dare to hurt him again!” Frigga tries to wrench him away from her son but, once again, Odin proves to be unstoppable in his fury. “The booze you’ve been drinking, you sneaked it out of my office, didn’t you? Helped yourself to the gifts from my clients?”

Loki shrugs and before she can hold back her husband, Odin smacks Loki in the side of his head. “At least admit it!”

“Get _off_ of him!” Thor’s voice rings out from the doorway. As if trying to absolve her from the guilt of wanting him in the house, her eldest strides into the room wearing nothing except for a pair of black boxers, yanks his father backwards and spins him around, positioning his two hundred pounds of solid muscle between Odin and his brother. Odin exhales a long breath trembling with anger. “Dad, what the hell? It’s just booze. _Relax_!”

“Booze paid for with blood money at that,” Loki points out as he scrambles to his feet and emerges behind Thor’s cover, his face smoothing into an expression that Frigga has never seen before. His eyes begin to flicker almost yearningly; almost as if he _wants_ his father to hurt him. “Congratulations that you finally figured it out, by the way.”

Yes, he is definitely provoking him on purpose. Frigga grabs her husband by the wrist, holding him back. “Don’t,” she whispers, unsure whether it’s directed at Odin or at Loki, who flashes his father a smirk.

“I’ve been snuggling stuff out of there for weeks and you didn’t even notice until now? Tsk. You’d expect a top lawyer to be more astute than that, right?”

Odin springs forward, his hand jerking out of Frigga’s grip and swinging backwards. She yells her husband’s name, yells at him to stop, but he’s already gained too much momentum to stop the blow. Thor steps in though, effortlessly stretching out his arm in front of his brother in a protective gesture, intercepting the punch. When Odin’s fist thumps into Thor’s right arm, he winces and pulls his hand back, cursing under his breath. Frigga starts breathing a quiet sigh of relief but then she realizes that Loki looks almost disappointed for a second before the smirk returns to his lips and the relief dies instantly and then Thor draws himself to his full height and shoves his father so violently in the chest that he stumbles a few steps backwards. “You call _me_ a brute, lecturing me about blowing off my steam before I come here? You’re the worst fucking hypocrite!”

For a second, it looks as if Odin is going to lunge at _him_ but then he takes a long, hard look at his son’s broad, naked chest and, eventually, his body stills. “Careful how you speak to me, boy.”

“Or what?” Thor crosses his arms in front of his chest. “I’m not afraid of you, old man.”

“You’d better be. And you listen to me,” Odin snarls at Loki, ignoring Thor the same way he always ignores her. “This isn’t about the booze. It’s about your blatant disrespect for me and the rules of this house! There’s a number of good reasons I lock this door and if you think you can just break into …” He cuts himself off with a sharp breath and starts clutching his chest.

Despite everything, Frigga instinctively reaches out to him, trying to grab his arm.

“I’ve had enough of your shenanigans,” Odin hisses as he slaps her hand away. “If you don’t clean up your act, I’ll send you to boarding school on the East Coast for the rest of the schoolyear where you can terrorize other people with your drama, do you understand?”

“I’m neither deaf nor intellectually challenged,” Loki snaps but the smirk is gone and his voice is cracking slightly.

“And isn’t that a pity?” Odin snaps back. “I’d choose an intellectually challenged child over your emotionally challenged-ness anytime!”

His words hurt even Frigga like a blow to the gut but Loki just narrows his eyes at his father and mumbles, “Thank God you still got Thor then.”

“Save the false theatrics! They won’t change anything, you hear me? I’ve had enough. One more slip and you are _done_ ,” Odin bellows. He glares at Frigga, eyes blazing with an unspoken warning, before he turns around without another word, stomping out of the room and down the stairs.

Frigga’s stomach clenches when she catches the flash of panic in Loki’s eyes. “Give me a minute,” she sighs before she goes after her husband.

* * *

Loki flops himself back onto the bed on his back, asking, “Doesn’t that make you wanna move right back in?” And then he starts giggling, actually fucking giggling, as if their Dad didn’t just try to beat him up. “Honestly, you’ve been missing out on all this fun for _months_.”

“That old bastard just hit you,” Thor gasps, still flustered by the blatant hypocrisy and the secrecy and every other despicable trait ending in ‘y’ that his parents displayed in less than twelve hours. But more than that, he’s flustered by the renewed realization how strangely Loki’s mind operates and that he’ll never acquire the skills to analyze its intricate workings. “Why the hell are you laughing?”

“Because I find it amusing,” answers Loki. _There you go_. _Brain as crazy as a bag full of cats_.

“ _Amusing_?” Thor echoes.

“He called me emotionally challenged.” Loki cackles, an edge of hysteria to the sound. “He can’t even control his fucking temper and still he calls me emotionally challenged? Sure.”

After everything his Dad said last night, Thor went to bed under the impression that he’d done him an injustice by thinking of him as this grumpy old asshole for months. Turns out he was right after all. “You said this has been going on for months?” Thor begins awkwardly. “Is he … I mean does he …” _Does he hit you?_ It’s such a simple question really and yet it’s so difficult and so awkward to ask because, of course, he hit him, he just witnessed it, and Thor knows from having received the occasional slap in the face himself that this was not the first time their Dad flipped his lid. But there’s hitting someone and there’s _hitting_ someone. Thor never thought a slap in the face to be a big deal—his grandfather used to say that a little smack here and there helped to build character—but then again, he’s as sturdy as a trunk whereas his little brother is basically a twig. Going against Loki like that was definitely more than just a slap. He told his Mom that violence and neglect were kinda big words. Maybe they’re not. “How often does that happen?”

Loki half shrugs, half shakes his head.

“Come on, tell me,” Thor demands.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Loki says and Thor knows that he won’t get another word out of his little brother without going against him himself. “You know how he is. He’ll calm down.”

For a moment, Thor just stands there, towering above Loki’s bed, thinking of how to strike up a conversation, eventually deciding on, “So, you broke the code, huh?” Loki set his mind on gaining access to their Dad’s office before—mainly because Odin area-fifty-one’d the hell out of it and Loki just wanted to see what was inside Thor figures—but gave up on the idea again when he realized he couldn’t even be sure if it was a four-digit code. “Didn’t you say there were like a kazillion possible combinations? How did you get in?” He pauses. “And what was it?”

“Sixty-two, eighty-one,” Loki replies because they both know their father has probably already changed it by now.

Thor chews on that for a minute. “Does that have any significance?”

A soft, subtly condescending smile plucks at Loki’s lips. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. In time.”

Thor grunts. “You’re not gonna tell me how, are you?”

Loki shrugs again.

“So, you wanna come down to the pool with me?” Thor tries, smothering the spark of anger flaring up inside of him.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m tired.”

“You slept for more than fifteen hours.”

“And he woke me up with his clamor.” Loki clasps his hands above his head and stretches himself and his shirt rides up a little, revealing a pair of starkly protruding hipbones that gives Thor the creeps. “I could sleep some more,” he mumbles around a yawn.

“You can’t just sleep the whole time,” Thor objects even though Loki always slept a lot after a night terror because, apparently, having mental health issues is pretty damn exhausting for the person who has them. When he was a kid, he would wrap himself up in his fluffy green blanket hugging his favorite plushie—a twenty-inch tall iguana he named Jorgi—and lie on the couch or on Frigga’s lap, staring at a TV screen or dozing with open eyes. Thor gazes around the room. The stuffed animal is now perching on top of the bookshelf and, because childhood toys are simply creepy by nature, Jorgi looks like he is looking down on him, judging him, ordering him to do something. “Come on. You could use some sunlight.” He pokes Loki’s arm. “Plus, a dive into the pool is, like, the best hangover-killer ever. It’s better than cold pizza. Just get up.”

“No.”

“You can’t just hole up here like some vampire in a vault,” Thor continues as he strides towards the window and pulls open the blinds, allowing the first rays of sunlight to spill into the room.

Loki squawks as if the light could actually hurt him. “Just go for that damn swim by yourself and leave me alone, okay?”

“No,” says Thor. “Nothing will ever get better if you stay in bed all day and choose to be miserable.” He sits back down and pokes him again. “Get up.”

“Why can you not just go?” Loki asks.

“Because, believe it or not, I actually wanna spend time with your sorry emo ass.” He pokes him again. “Let’s just get up and have breakfast, okay?”

“I’m not hungry.”

A lump forms in Thor’s throat. “But you’re getting pretty damn skinny there, bro. You know that, right?” He reaches for the hem of Loki’s shirt, trying to lift it up. “I could probably cut myself on those—”

Loki gasps and jerks away from him as if he touched him with a hot iron, rolling himself into a ball. _Shit_. _Holy_ _shit_. _Holy fucking shit._ “Just go away.”

“Come on, I’m really trying here,” Thor begs again. “Can’t you have a little mercy?”

“I don’t want you to try,” Loki says and disappears under his blanket.

“That sounded different last night,” Thor points out.

Loki chuckles nervously. “You know that alcohol acts upon your judgment, right?” His face emerges from under the blanket, twisted into a frown. “I reassessed the situation and have come to the conclusion that, in sobriety, I find your presence rather bothersome. Suffocating almost.”

“You reassessed the situation?” Thor echoes, his anger flaring up again despite his best efforts to stay calm. “To conclude that I am bothersome? _Bothersome_?! Really?! What are you? A fucking robot?”

“Maybe. I doubt your tiny brain could tell the difference,” Loki snarks.

“Why do you always have to make everything so fucking difficult, huh?” Thor shouts and then his anger grows to full flame. He can feel its heat searing him from the inside, burning the walls of his stomach. “I’m trying to fucking help you here, okay? I understand you’re upset and everything but you can’t beg me to stay one moment and then send me away the next. I wanna help you but you need to make up your fucking mind!”

Loki huffs another nervous laugh. “I didn’t _beg_ you to stay.”

“You asked me to,” Thor objects.

“Why would I do that? My life was infinitely better with you away in college.”

Thor exhales a long breath to prevent himself from lunging at Loki’s throat like their Dad did a few minutes ago. “Fine,” he brings himself to say as he turns away, heading for the door. “Have fun brooding.”

“Wait, where are you going?” comes from the bed.

Thor leaves Loki stewing in his room and storms back into his own, inhaling sharply. _This is so fucked up_. _Loki’s so fucking smart_. _Doesn’t he realize what he’s saying? Doesn’t he realize he isn’t even making any sense?_

“Where are you going?” Loki has come tiptoeing after him and he’s lurking in the doorway, making puppy eyes at him.

Thor bites his lip to keep himself from replying.

“Thor! Answer me.”

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Thor yells. “If you don’t even want me here, shouldn’t you be glad that I’m leaving you alone? Why do you care? You’re not making any fucking sense!” He slams the door into his brother’s face and turns the key, locking him out to protect him from his anger. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go. Now you know why Frigga has a savior complex and why Odin is losing his temper because, as long as people behave the way he expects them to, everything is fine. And how dare they disrespect the head of the family like that in the first place? They're only asking for trouble *shakes head in sarcasm* Even though this is a real life au, I've been trying to incorporate as many of the "variables" of the movies and the comics, which is why Loki has been abanonded as a baby and Odin actually inherited his temper from his father who beat him senseless, which is why he thought it was right to do that to his own kids. He actually tells Thor that in the comics once and then apologizes for having been so rough on him when he's drunk on mead. Not that I'm making excuses or whatever, he's still an asshole but, as Loki presumed earlier shortly before his appointment with Dr. van Dyne, a lot of times there are reasons WHY people are assholes *sighs*
> 
> And yes, I couldn't resist to have Loki name his favorite plushie after Jormungandr. I thought about his favorite stuffed animal being a snake but snake plushies are awful to hug, so ...


	17. All muscly and savior-ish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frigga makes a decision, Loki is battling his depression and Thor is trying to cool off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a trigger warning for suicidal thoughts because Loki really feels like shit and I honestly cried a little writing his POV in this one. On the bright side, we meet Tony Stark but Thor isn't in the best mood to meet up with friends *coughs*

“Thor!” Loki screams, hammering his fists against his brother’s door, horrified because he messed up. _Again_. Why does he always have to mess things up? Why can he not just stay in the same mindset for an entire conversation for _once_? Well, he knows why and it has to do with consciousnesses converging in nightmarish caves—consciousnesses in the fucking plural, let that sink in, you freak, _freak_ , _freak_ , _freak_ —and it probably has something to do with booze too because, if he’s really honest with himself, everything turned even shittier since he started using scotch to switch his brain off. The child’s voice from the day before creeping up on his consciousness again right now is proof enough for that. “Brother, _please_! Answer me!”

Thor is ignoring him because that’s what he does to punish him. Just as Frigga gives him the silent treatment to coax a truth out of him sometimes, his brother figured out long ago that Loki can’t stand to be ignored. It’s probably why he provokes fights in school with The Voice or riles up his Dad on purpose too. He needs to make sure that people notice him. He needs to make sure that he can get a reaction out of them, even if it’s a negative reaction.

 _You are alienating people on purpose_.

 _You want people to push you away, don’t you_?

Well, Nikias does and then Loki has to do something to make them come back, which has become beyond exhausting. “Thor, please!”

His brother leaves him knocking for a good ten minutes before he opens the door in a pair of bright red swimming trunks, bathing towel thrown over his shoulder, and wordlessly pushes past him, continuing the silent treatment. _Don’t you dare to ask him where he’s going_ , _you dumbass freak_! No, there’s no need to ask. Thor is going for a swim in their two-thousand-square-feet pool Loki hasn’t been able to use since he started ripping his own skin open. Sometimes, he kinda misses to jump into that pool because Thor was right, of course, there’s nothing like diving into cold water when you want to feel alive again and, right now, he _definitely_ misses it because it makes him think about the life he could have if he were normal. Breakfast with his brother and their Mom. Brotherly banter. Jokes about Thor’s appetite. Sunbathing. Water polo. Conversations. A weird terror-ish feeling slams into him when he realizes that having actual conversations is what he misses the most. He misses being able to talk to people without his mouth getting hijacked. He misses being able to tell his family that he loves them. He misses being able to talk about exciting stuff that happened or about things that he likes. He misses not being alone all the time.

He doesn’t even really have a _life_ apart from the crazies anymore and that’s such a miserable feeling because it feels like he doesn’t even exist as Loki anymore. Loki used to be a brother and a son and a student. He used to draw pictures and write stories in his head and he loved school and to learn things and he used to be smart and teachers used to like him and he used to win his elementary school’s annual spelling bees every time and he used to be able to climb into Thor’s bed at night and cry himself back to sleep against his brother’s steadily beating heart and now there’s nothing. He isn’t this Loki anymore. He isn’t any kind of Loki anymore. He hates school and he hates his brain and he hates everything else he used to enjoy because he’s turned into this crazy ass weirdo freak that spends ninety percent of his time trying to keep some freak ass voices inside his head from taking over his fucking body. There is nothing except for this. He is nothing outside the crazy. He is no one.

He suddenly feels hollow again, a big gaping hole where his heart is supposed to be. He walks back into his room and dives facedown into the pillows, praying that he could just die. He lies there for a long while, imagining how much easier things would be if his heart just stopped beating. He wills it to stop. When it doesn’t, he thinks about the razor blades in his book bag, about where to cut to make himself lose enough blood before anyone finds him. He remembers how he used to pretend to run away from Thor when they were outside by the pool because Thor always wanted to push him in even though he secretly loved it when he picked him up and hurled him into the water. He knows he’d start crying if he had any energy left.

 _These memories don’t mean shit after what Thor did_. _When will you understand?_

“And what is it that he did? That makes you hate him so much?” Loki whispers under his breath.

 _We all hate him_. _Well_ , _most of us_ , _anyway_.

 _Most of us_. That’s unsettling as hell—because as of now, he’s heard four distinct Voices and who says there couldn’t be even more?—but Loki pushes the thought away. “Well, I don’t. He’s _my_ brother. Just let _me_ deal with him.”

 _Too bad that how you deal with him doesn’t only affect you_.

“Just tell me what he did because I obviously have no recollection of it,” whispers Loki but not quietly enough, apparently, because his Mom asks him who he is talking to from the doorway.

 _I’m not here to make you suffer_.

“Who do you think?” Loki asks back in a thin voice because he doesn’t have the energy to lie or to pretend. He has zero energy left. He’s a life force bar in a video game that’s going from green to red in zero point five seconds. _No_ , _then why do you keep making me miserable_? _Just go and leave me alone_.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Frigga says and she sounds no less distraught about The Voices than she did a week ago as she sits down next to him, rubbing his back, her palm feeling out his shoulder blades. She must have made breakfast too because he can smell the nauseating odor of eggs mixed with melted butter on toast even with his nose buried in the pillows. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He does and he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how. There are no words because he doesn’t understand why Nikias is so angry with Thor and how it can be that The Voice only deals with school stuff whereas the child voice deals with … whatever. Loki doesn’t even know where that one or the other one that yelled at Nikias to stop talking in his nightmare suddenly came from. He isn’t sure he even wants to know because what good would it do if he actually knew how fucked up his mind _really_ is?

He makes an unidentifiable gurgling sound.

 _Pathetic_. _You’re so fucking pathetic_.

“Look, why don’t we pack up a few things and get out of here for a while?” Frigga asks, still rubbing his back. “We could go to Malibu until your therapist’s appointment, just the two of us.”

Loki looks up at her then, staring into her aged, worry-lined face. “You’ve got work.”

“Not anymore.” She shakes her head, a sad smile playing on her lips. “And work is not important right now, my love. _You_ are what’s important. I made you some breakfast. Why don’t you eat and then we’ll head—”

“But Dad,” Loki cuts her off, unsure what he is even trying to say. “He’s …” His voice trails off.

“Your father and I, we are going to take a break,” Frigga announces after a pause.

And just like that, new energy streams into him as if he received a powerful shock of high voltage with a Taser. He sits up, searching for his Mom’s gaze. “You’re not breaking up, are you?”

She reaches for his hair, twisting a strand in her fingers. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“But …” There are still no words. There is only a very, very disconcerting lurch in the pit of his stomach he can’t even identify because he knows he should be glad about that—or at least he thinks he should be glad because there’s no pleasing that grumpy old bastard, _nope_ , _not a chance in hell_ , Odin is giving off negative vibes wherever he goes—but Loki isn’t glad. He is scared. “I don’t want to go to Malibu.”

“Why not? You could use a change of scenery, I’m sure,” Frigga murmurs, cupping his cheeks. “A little sea air?”

“Because it’s my fault, isn’t it?” Loki whimpers and, suddenly, he can feel the child voice trying to take over. His vision flickers, whitening at the edges. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to stay focused. “You’re only fed up with him because of how he treats me and I’m not gonna be the reason you get a divorce!”

“Honey, I didn’t say we’d get divorced,” says Frigga. “And, even though that’s a big factor, his temper isn’t the only thing I’m fed up with. It’s … way more complicated than that.”

Loki can almost feel the weight of the secrets she’s keeping from him. He opens his eyes again. “Complicated how?”

Frigga keeps silent for a few moments before she replies. “That’s a conversation for another time.”

 _They’re all lying to you_ , _don’t you see_? _They lie to you and turn your backs on you and hit you in the face and still you need them so fucking much_? _What the hell is wrong with you_?

Everything. Everything about him is wrong. Everything about his life is wrong. But it’s probably what he deserves for being such a freaking sorry ass basket case. Crazy people don’t deserve good things, do they? Crazy people don’t get to have relationships or conversations or breakfasts by the pool. Crazy people don’t get to have a functioning family. “I don’t want to go to Malibu,” Loki repeats even though he does, he fucking does, but he knows he can’t have this life anymore. It’s just now how it works. “Just leave me alone.” He suppresses the sob clawing at his throat. “Please. I just … I need to be alone.”

Frigga rubs his back once more before she complies. As soon as she closed the door behind her, the child voice inside his head starts crying, using his mouth. “Mama …”

* * *

Thor is still fuming when he climbs out of the pool even though a swim always calmed him down in the past. Not today though. Not when everything is so beyond fucked-up. Not when Loki has apparently stopped eating like some cheerleader chick on top of all the other crap he’s dealing with. Not when his kickass Mom turned into this weak old woman who felt the need to manipulate him into spending time with Loki because she can’t get through to her little baby anymore. Not when his Dad turned into this furious, abusive old bastard. Seeing his Dad lose it like that is probably what flusters him the most. Not that Odin ever was a saint of a parent but the way he acted these past hours is still making Thor feel very nauseous, not least of all because he felt that same anger seethe inside of him whenever someone pissed him off so many times. Seeing his Dad like that was like looking into a mirror showing him a glance of his own future and all he can think of is how his Dad just went berserk after trying to make him believe he cared about what’s best for him, wanted him to thrive and live his own life and all that crap. All he can think of is how he went against Loki like that and then glared at Thor as if him trying to prevent him from using his fists on his scrawny little brother was actually an act of disrespect. All he can think of is how he badly he does not want to turn into _that_.

He sits down on one of the sunbeds, absentmindedly toweling himself, debating whether to stay or to get the hell out. He knows he should go back to his apartment to keep himself from losing his own shit. He doesn’t _have to_ engage in his family’s bullshit anymore, especially not if the one person he came back for told him for the hundredth time that he doesn’t even _want_ him around. And it’s not as if Thor needs Loki or his Mom and least of all his Dad to live his life. He did fine on his own for more than a year and he’ll do fine on his own again if he doesn’t let them drag him down with their bull crap. He doesn’t have to put up with any of this, especially not with this season being the most important one of his career to date, right?

Wrong. Odin turned into an unpredictable rage machine, Frigga simply doesn’t have the brawn to stop his Dad when he sees red and, no matter what he says when he’s in crazy mode, Loki needs him to be here, and he wants Loki to be okay. It’s exactly like he suspected when his Mom called him a few weeks ago. It’s been easy to block it all out on campus but, coming back here, he knows for certain that nothing has really changed since they were kids.

“Yo, Champ,” comes a voice from the wall of wooden logs separating their backyard from the Stark family home. Thor turns around and stares into the grinning face of Tony, whose head is poking over the fence. “How’s it going?”

Thor doesn’t quite know whether he’s disappointed or relieved that his very perceptive, very sarcastic friend who’s so very likely to call him out on his agitated state has actually decided to return to his family home the same weekend he did when he just tried to cool off. “What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

It’s a legit question. Thor has been living in the apartment Tony bought after he returned from MIT after his Dad kicked him out a year ago because Tony doesn’t really need it. Theoretically, he still lives there but, in reality, he is way too busy developing apps and games and artificial intelligence stuff Thor can’t even wrap his head around and he’s always touring the globe to present his inventions at conventions and exhibitions, racking up shit tons of cash just like their fathers. He comes back every now and then, dropping in to crash for a while, but Thor hasn’t seen him in weeks and meeting him where they both grew up feels like another throwback he could’ve done without.

“It occurred to me that I haven’t seen my parents in almost a year. Thought it was time to make an appearance to keep my Mom from worrying herself to death.” Tony grimaces and, considering his lifestyle, Thor can’t blame Maria Stark in the least.

“And you actually thought you could stop her from worrying if you come here looking like shit?” Thor chuckles as he walks towards the fence. Tony often looks like shit when he returns from his trips because there’s usually a lot of partying involved but he’s never seen him this wrung out. “Seriously, Stark. You look like absolute shit.”

“I just got back from Lucerne and I think I’m still hungover,” Tony mumbles. “How about you, though? You look like you wanna claw someone’s eyes out and I’m kinda glad there’s this wall of wood separating us, you know? What are you doing here?”

That’s a legit question as well considering that they usually only return to their family homes if utmost necessity demands it. Thor blows out an annoyed breath. “My Mom needed a babysitter, I guess.”

“Ah.” Tony doesn’t even look the tiniest fucking bit surprised. “Loki’s on drugs, right?”

Thor feels every nerve in his body tighten. “What makes you think that?”

“Look, I was gonna text you but …” He makes another grimace and suddenly there’s a water glass filled with a substantial amount of scotch in his hand, which he brings to his lips and takes a sip as if it isn’t only like nine in the fucking morning.

“You’re seriously drinking? At this hour?” Thor asks in the voice of a condescending parent as if they didn’t get wasted together when they were barely eighteen and took his father’s boat out onto the lake with a few girls to party.

“In my defense, I’m still operating on European time and I need to take care of that hangover,” Tony counters as he raises his glass at him. “Cheers, I guess?”

“Cheers,” Thor grumbles. “So what is it you were gonna text me about?”

“I ran into Loki the other day,” says Tony with visible reluctance.

“When?”

“About three weeks ago? I’m not sure.” He gives a shrug and takes another sip of his drink and Thor stifles the urge to climb over the fence and smash the glass out of his hands. “I was picking up take-away and he was sitting on the curb on the mall area and he was, like, panting heavily, head buried in his elbows. There were a few people nearby but they didn’t really do anything, so I drove up to him, rolled down my window and asked him if he needed a ride and he just looked at me like … I don’t even know. He seemed really upset and I told him to get in.”

“And?” Thor enquires.

“I don’t know, it was weird. Almost like he didn’t recognize me, I guess. I was like, ‘Come on, I don’t bite’ and all the et ceteras. Eventually, he got into the car and he thanked me for picking him up and his face looked so different? And then he started like, ‘My address is Ninety-two, seventy-three Tournament’ and I went like, ‘Dude, I know where you live. I’ve known you since the day your mother brought you home from the hospital in a pair of diapers’.”

Tony’s words activate a long buried memory of Frigga placing a baby Loki into his lap and softly murmuring, “Sweetheart, you’ve got a baby brother now,” but it’s blurry and he doesn’t remember going to a hospital like people do on TV where the entire family storms the maternity ward when a baby is born. He tries to dig deeper but he doesn’t come up with anything. He doesn’t even remember that she was ever pregnant but, then again, he was four and kids forget a lot of stuff. He shoves the thought away.

“I know that sounds kinda crazy but halfway through our ride back,” Tony is saying, “it was like he suddenly remembered me and the look in his eyes … It was like … a transformation or something,” Tony explains, not very helpfully. “Almost like a different … personality.” He takes another sip of scotch and grimaces again. Thor is tempted to dismiss Tony’s explanations because his friend uses his trips across the globe as an excuse to drink around the clock but even taking the booze into account, he is still more perceptive than ninety-nine percent of the world population and his brain is even bigger than Loki’s and there’s no dismissing that. Apart from that, Thor saw Loki’s mood and his voice and his face change drastically with his own eyes during the hours he spent here.

“Okay that sounded wrong,” says Tony.

“Yeah, it sounded kinda like _Split_ or some shit.”

“Gosh no, not like that,” Tony backpedals but still Thor’s brain immediately chooses not to dwell on his friend’s assessment any further. “Way more … subtle. But still kinda creepy. I swear to you, when he got into that car, he didn’t know who I was.”

Thor’s fingers clench into fists. “And you just ‘forgot’ to text me about that?”

“Well, actually,” Tony concedes, “I was kinda waiting to tell you in person because you always lose your shit when it comes to Loki.”

“Funny, I said the same thing to my Mom last night,” Thor grumbles even though there’s nothing remotely funny about Loki’s current mental state.

Tony shrugs a ‘What-can-I-say?’ type of shrug and flicks a glance towards the house. “At least you’re beginning to recognize it as a problem.”

Thor feels his muscles tighten again. “Beginning to recognize what as a problem?”

“Her savior complex,” Tony says around another sip of scotch.

“Her what?” Thor snaps because sometimes his friend just goes off on a tangent like that, throwing words around that don’t even make any fucking sense. Especially when he’s drunk.

“Her savior complex,” Tony says as if repeating a phrase sheds more light on its meaning. It’s as useful as yelling at people to calm the hell down. “Or protect Loki complex or whatever you wanna call this weird psychological mechanism that she passed on to you that makes you drop everything to play white knight whenever he’s in … trouble. Which is the real reason I didn’t tell you, if you must know,” Tony relents theatrically when Thor glowers at him. “I knew you’d head straight back here if you knew instead of focusing on that damn career you’ve been trying to build since High School and voilà.” He flashes him a shit-eating smirk. “Here you are, all muscly and savior-ish like a damn superhero.”

“I’m not playing white knight,” Thor growls because he knows that, despite the manipulation involved, coming home to protect Loki from their Dad was the right thing to do and now Tony makes it sound like a bad thing while he sees absolutely no problem with being hammered around breakfast time. _Screw him_. “And I don’t have a complex. And Loki isn’t in _trouble_. He’s going through some mental health issues, okay? Hell, from what you told me, you’re well aware of that, so how is me being here in any way wrong?”

Tony looks at him as if Thor is the densest person walking the planet. It’s a look he knows well but it stings even more when it comes from someone who should be drunk-drooling by now with that much booze in their system. “What?” Thor bellows.

“He’s always been going through some mental health issues,” Tony says, or rather slurs, and Thor’s hand itches to smack him. “And you’ve never been able to do much about it.”

Thor’s stomach clenches.

“All I’m saying is,” Tony hurries to say when he sees the angry spark in his eyes, “that you can’t protect him from his own brain. Believe me, I know.” He chuckles. “I just don’t want you to put your own life on hold and drop everything just because your Mom roped you back in, okay?”

“What is this ‘dropping everything’ you won’t shut up about?” Thor growls.

“Off the top of my head?” Tony gazes at him with that shit-eating grin, raising his eyebrows at him. “I’m thinking of that one time you took bros before hoes to a whole new level when you kicked out this amazing girl you were dating in the middle of the night to sleep in his room.”

“Okay first of all, that _was_ only one time! He had an episode when my parents weren’t home, which is why I invited Sif over in the first place, so what was I supposed to do? And not that it matters because, thanks to you, she broke up with me shortly after!”

“No, thanks to _you_ , she broke up with you shortly after. I only told her the truth.”

“What truth, Stark? You don’t _know_ the truth. You’re an only child who never had to take care of anyone except for your own sorry ass and look how well you’re succeeding at that!”

Tony winces as if he punched him in the face. “As I said, I was just trying to help you.”

“Yeah, well, if that’s how you’re trying to help, you can shove it,” snaps Thor, his anger erupting like a volcano in the pit of his stomach once more as he turns around and storms back towards the pool. Tony fucking Stark always thinks he knows everything just because he practically had a front row seat growing up before he went to MIT. Just because a flabbergasted Sif had the audacity to run to Tony after Thor asked her to leave in the middle of the night and told him all about how Thor “crawled into Loki’s bed” and “swept him into a hug” and “pressed him close to his chest” and how “weird” and “creepy” that was as if Thor actually touched him in an inappropriate way when he tried to steady him to keep his limbs from flailing.

 _Fuck them_. _Fuck them all_. _They don’t know shit_.

Thor ignores whatever it is Tony shouts after him, throws the towel onto the sunbed and dives headfirst into the pool again, hoping that it’ll calm him down the second time around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what do y'all think? Is Thor gonna stay or is something gonna set him off so that he just storms out? I'm curious how he's coming across. Apart from the fact that he's also still very, very ignorant with regard to some issues and very condescending of course *rolls eyes*
> 
> Thank you for reading. The next two chapters are almost edited (as far as my perfectionist ass can tell) and I've been writing chapter 20 today aaaand we're inching ever closer towards the incident!!! I hope you're all still "excited", if you can even call it that. Maybe you also dread it, which, of course, is fine :) 
> 
> Until next time!


	18. Driving lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Loki get to spend some time together. What can go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we start, I’m gonna share a little snippet with you that I wrote a while ago. It’s a Thor POV sorta flashback to their childhood when he was about nine years old:  
> \----------------------------------------------------  
> The crying doesn't wake him up anymore because Loki cries almost every night. He is used to the noise. He only wakes up when Loki tiptoes into his room and climbs up on his bed and shakes him.
> 
> “What,” Thor mumbles drowsily, hoping that Loki will fall back asleep without him having to say too much. He doesn't want to talk right now. He wants to sleep. 
> 
> “I'm scared,” cries Loki.
> 
> “You don't need to be scared,” Thor tells him even though he recently discovered that Loki won't stop being scared just because he says so. Loki doesn't believe people when they tell him things. He half-opens his eyes. Loki's eyes are red and puffy and he's shaking. He does that a lot. Thor lifts his arm a little to let him snuggle in. Loki throws himself against him, burrowing into his chest, clutching first at his shirt and then his chin, his cheek.
> 
> “Go to sleep,” says Thor because he is tired. He is very tired.
> 
> “But I'm scared,” wails Loki.
> 
> “Of what?” relents Thor even though he really, really doesn't want to talk. The nights he has to talk are the worst because he can’t fall back asleep if he does too much talking and then he gets really tired in school the next day. Loki only whimpers. Thor hugs him tighter. Loki likes it when he does that. Loki calms down when he hugs him real, real tight. “Look, whatever it is, my hug protects you, okay? You can go to sleep.”
> 
> Loki sniffles. “Promise?”
> 
> “Promise. My hug is like a shield,” Thor mumbles and Loki stops whimpering so loudly. He just whimpers softly and quietly and that's a very familiar noise and very lulling. As always, Thor falls back asleep long before Loki does.  
> \-------------------------------------------------  
> *sighs*
> 
> Now, onwards to brotherly banter, dumbassery and dramatics!

**_Wednesday, September 25 th, 2019_ **

**_  
4 days to the incident_ **

Thor doesn’t expect anything to have changed when he strides into the living room after his twelve to two p.m. class but Loki ends up surprising him. His brother finally left his room after three days and his hair is shower-wet, or maybe it’s gel-drenched, Thor can’t really tell the difference, but at least he did _something_ with it. He also applied what Thor thinks is eyeliner and black nail polish to all of his nails except for the ring fingers, which he painted in the same dark green as his skinny jeans, and he’s wearing a normal black shirt instead of his PJs. Thor still doesn’t have a clue why Loki dresses like that but it doesn’t matter right now because even his ridiculous emo getup is better than a pajama. He walks over to where Loki is sitting on the couch cross-legged, glancing up at him from some Brainiac level puzzle game on his tablet. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Thor replies uneasily. They haven’t really talked at all these past few days, mainly because Loki slept almost all the time like some depressed little turtle pulling into its shell. And every time he did wake up, he either stared or cried or screamed or told them to leave him alone, which Thor couldn’t do, of course, which is why he drove straight back to his apartment on Sunday afternoon to get the most important of his things and temporarily moved back in—much to Frigga’s relief and Odin’s dismay. But no matter what Tony or his father said, Thor knows he can’t just leave, especially not when Loki has somehow, inexplicably, developed backwards into that bundle of childhood nightmares. Although that’s not entirely true. For some reason, Loki’s episodes have evolved and they’re much more intense now than they were when he was a kid. Either that or Thor can’t handle them as well anymore because, having the life experience of a semi-grown-up, he is no longer under any illusion that hugs and magical pillow forts will fix his little brother because his traumatized ass probably needs more therapy to work through all of his issues than you can fit into a human lifetime. _Traumatized_. He still can’t handle that word very well either even though it’s beginning to look like the only reasonable explanation for his brother’s mental state. Frigga doesn’t handle the whole thing well either. She continues to move around the house like this sorry ass ghost of her former kickass self, trying to make him eat at least a little every now and then but Loki’s appetite comes in very irregular intervals and more often than not, he rejects the food she prepares for him. The only good things that happened this week so far are that his Dad has been camping at the firm or the courthouse or wherever since Monday morning, finally getting off their backs, and that Frigga called Loki’s therapist to-be, who actually took the time to stop by their house to check in on him. Even if Loki wasn’t in any shape to actually talk to her, at least Thor knows now that she seems like a good person and she even explained a few things that Thor still has a hard time wrapping his head around.

And what she said seems really far-fetched now anyway because Loki is sitting there, spick and span like nothing happened, flashing him an actual smile. “Do you still want to hang out?”

Surprise washes over Thor when he hears his brother speak in non-hysterical. “I guess so,” he mumbles even though he instinctively knows that there’s gonna be a catch. With Loki, there’s always a catch.

“I’ve got my learner’s permit,” Loki announces and Thor’s heart sinks to the bottom of his stomach. _Catch_. _Huge catch right there_. “Mom promised me she was going to teach me but, as you very well know, keeping promises has never been our family’s forte, so I thought …” His voice trails off as he points to Thor and back to himself.

“She’s probably just worried you’re gonna pass out or something,” Thor replies. “And who can blame her? You have zero energy. Apart from that, I’m not twenty-one yet, so ...” He shrugs the rest. Thank God that he isn’t twenty-one yet. Thank God he can’t legally accompany him as a licensed adult driver. The thought of having to be in the same car with Loki when he has an episode behind the wheel is more than terrifying.

“I was afraid you were going to chicken out but, let me tell you, cowardice is really not a good look for you, Thunderbolt,” Loki sighs, using the nickname he earned on the football field in seventh grade. He crosses his arms in front of his chest with a shit-eating grin on his face, green eyes flickering. “Honestly, you used to be so cool and fearless and adventurous and now you’re like … like _this_.”

And just like that, Thor’s resistance begins to crumble because he isn’t a lame ass adult yet who shies away from breaking the rules. He’s still fearless. He’s still … allowing himself to be played by his brother.

 _That little shit_.

“And I really thought you wanted to spend some time with me.” Loki pouts as if he didn’t yell into Thor’s face to leave him the fuck alone every single time Thor tried to talk him into at least watching a goddamn movie together. No, it takes something like teaching this little drama queen how to fucking drive in order to prove that he still cares. “I promise I’ll have a sandwich before we go.”

Thor follows his brother into the kitchen and sizes him up as he makes two double-decker avocado bacon sandwiches, looking for any crazy vibes, halfway expecting his brother to start screaming at him in one of his weird voices at any moment. But Loki is perfectly calm, perfectly Loki. He slides one of the sandwiches over to him and begins to munch away as if the night terrors and the depression just slipped off of him like snakeskin, revealing the version of his brother that is perfectly sane and perfectly normal. The version that licks his lips when he polished off the whole thing in less than ten minutes and flutters his lashes at him as if the past days have been deleted from his memory. As if they were still kids and nothing ever happened between them. It’s creepy but, then again, it’s what Thor wished to happen since he set foot into the house again.

“So, what do you say?” Loki asks with another pout. “Please?”

 _Damn that sleekly little shit_ _for_ _roping him into another one of his pranks_ _with his damn puppy eyes_.

“Alright,” Thor yields because he really does want to spend time with him, even if that means trouble. When they walk towards the garage, it occurs to him that Loki waited until Frigga actually left the house for a medical check-up that had been scheduled for weeks to ask him for this, which leaves him wondering how much of Loki’s distress was serious and how much was unnecessary drama. Because Loki is pretty damn sneaky and even if he gave Thor the impression that he was staring into nothingness all day long, that damn brain of his has been working the entire time. There has to be a reason he jumped out of bed like a jack popping out of the box the minute Frigga stopped helicoptering him.

“You know I’m driving stick shift though, right?” Thor asks as he slides onto the passenger seat of his Tesla, hoping he can maybe scare him off.

Loki shrugs. “I know how cars work.”

Thor swallows. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” his brother says with a downwards glance at the pedals at his feet. “The left one is the clutch. If I step on it, I’ll disengage the assembly and if I lift my foot again, the friction of the assembly will start to move, which is what I believe causes this lovely vehicle to move forward.”

“Honestly, why are you such a nerd?” Thor asks, ruffling through his brother’s hair because he’s buckled and can’t jerk away for once. _Yep_ , _definitely gel_. _Probably half a tube_.

“Maybe because I actually know what a book looks like when you open it?” Loki counters.

“Very funny.” Thor grimaces before he opens the garage door and hands him the keys. “Alright, if you’re so smart, just go. Drive. Blow me away.”

Loki puts the key in the ignition but he hesitates before turning it. “Just like that? I just switch it on?”

Thor smirks at him. “Didn’t you say you know how a car works?”

Loki huffs a sigh, giving him the satisfaction. “Just tell me, okay?”

“So you release the handbrake. No, wait, you put your foot on the brake and then release … Wait.”

“You’ve been driving for five years. What’s your problem?”

“I don’t know it’s … harder to explain than I thought because I’m doing it automatically. Okay, let me think,” Thor mumbles when Loki glowers at him. “Put your left foot on the clutch and your right foot on the brake, release the handbrake and then start the car.”

Loki complies and the car’s engine purrs to life.

“Now, put the shifter into first gear and lift your brake foot,” Thor instructs and when Loki complies, the car inches forward a tiny little bit. “Okay now you’ve got to lift your clutch foot and press the gas simultaneously like—”

The engine dies before Thor can finish his explanation.

“Yeah, more gentle than that,” Thor chuckles because he’s usually the one who can’t do anything gentle. Loki glowers at him again. “The idea is that you lift the clutch only a tiny little bit before you start accelerating. It’s like you kinda have to balance them out? You can’t just take your foot off the clutch right away. You need to lift as much pressure off the clutch as you add to the throttle. Kinda like one of these old-fashioned scales where you adjust weights on either side until they’re in balance?” _Gosh_. Suddenly Thor understands why teaching kids how to ride a bicycle is such a huge thing because it’s impossible to put into words what exactly his brother needs to do to get that damn car moving. “Don’t you have a theoretical kind of explanation for the process you can pull out of that big brain of yours?”

“I think so,” Loki mumbles. He mulls over it for a minute, his teeth pulling at his lower lip, and then he tries again. And again. And again. At the third try, the car starts rolling out of the garage and down the driveway at a snail’s pace.

“Good,” says Thor even though he has no idea how tell him what to do next before they actually reach the curb. “So, whenever you wanna stop when you’re still in first gear, press the brake and the clutch simultaneously,” he tries.

He halfway expects them to just roll onto the street and hit a child running after a ball but Loki slows the car to an astonishingly smooth stop.

“Okay, now put the blinker—”

“I’m not a total idiot,” Loki snaps.

“—and accelerate again,” Thor finishes on an annoyed breath. “There you go. Now, continue to build up speed until the dashboard tells you to shift into second gear. There’s this little arrow that appears when you have to … Whoa, accelerate gently, okay?” Thor gasps when Loki hits the gas. “Go easy on the pedal! We’re not on a fucking race track!”

Loki huffs but he complies without any verbal protest and, after a while, he eases into it. Being the fast learner that he is, it takes his huge ass brain only about forty minutes of aimless driving through the neighborhood to figure out how to upshift and downshift without causing the Tesla to jerk abruptly and give Thor heart palpitations.

“Congratulations,” says Thor, astonished how relaxed he is after about ninety minutes of driving. “You’ve blown me away.” A soft smile appears on Loki’s lips that puts him even more at ease and makes him glad that he decided to stay and not give up on trying to spend time with his little brother. When he isn’t terrorized by his issues, Loki is the most amazing person to hang out with because he always finds ways to surprise him with how quickly his brain figures stuff out. “Now, let’s get our asses back home, okay?”

Loki’s smile dies and he looks almost insulted. “Why?”

“Because we’ve been in that car long enough,” Thor replies as he gazes out of the window, realizing they’re leaving the neighborhood. “We’re just increasing our chances of getting pulled over and you’re going … Hey, where exactly _are_ you going?” He sits up straight, muscles tensing.

“I thought we were going for a ride,” says Loki, a creepy ass smirk pulling at his lips that is nothing like the smile he just saw. “A real ride.”

“When you have your license maybe,” Thor gulps when he sees the signs for the parkway loom up in front of them because Loki’s face changed again, he’s looking _different_ again, and Thor has no fucking idea why. “Loki, please. Let’s just get home. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“Since when are _you_ worried about getting in trouble?” Loki asks him in a cold voice dripping with disdain and, suddenly, he is very, very obviously not the perfectly normal, perfectly sane version of his brother anymore. _Shit_. _Holy fucking shit_.

“Everything was fine a minute ago,” Thor gasps. “What the hell is wrong? Just don’t … I swear to God, if you take the parkway,” Thor warns his brother as he tries to gauge how much damage he’d cause if he just seized the wheel but they’re going about thirty-five miles an hour and there’s cars all around them and he can’t trust Loki not to do anything crazily impulsive when he has _that_ smirk on his face. _Oh_ , _please no_. _Why am I so fucking stupid_? _Why did I agree to this_? “Loki, please. What the fuck are you doing? Let’s just go home, okay? Stop!”

“I don’t wanna go home,” Loki says and then he puts the blinker on, switches lanes and takes the ramp onto Summerlin Parkway.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

Loki’s creepy ass smirk turns into an even creepier grin.

“If the cops pull us over, we’re toast. You know that, right?” Thor tries. “You do actually _remember_ what Dad said about sending you to boarding school if you mess up again, right? Why are you always looking for trouble, huh?”

Just like that, Loki’s grin dies. He hits the gas, accelerating recklessly as he merges into parkway traffic without even looking into the side mirror.

 _Oh fuck_. _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_!

“Okay, relax,” Thor gasps, flicking panicked glances at the cars driving past them. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it but we can just talk it out, okay? Just tell me what’s going on!”

“Since when is this family telling each other what’s really going on?” Loki counters, mindlessly switching to the left lane.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on right now!” Thor snaps when his fear transforms into anger. “I am sick of you getting me into trouble every time we hang out!”

“Then why _did_ you wanna hang out?” Loki asks him as he proceeds to switch lanes with increasingly jerkier movements as if he woke up this morning and decided to get them both killed in a car crash. Thor sees an exit ramp coming up and straightens even more in his seat. “Come on, just leave the damn Parkway and let us talk! Mom will give me hell for this! I’m the one who’s gotta pay for this, you know that, right?”

Loki speeds by the ramp and it disappears in Thor’s side mirror. _Fuck that little psycho_.

“We could drive to the beach house,” Loki announces out of the blue and Thor can feel his own features slip. “Mom wanted to take you and you said no! Do you even know what you want?” Of course he doesn’t. He’s batshit crazy and Thor shouldn’t have trusted him with the keys to his fucking car. What the hell has he been thinking? “Do you really think you can drive us three hundred miles to the fucking coast? Are you out of your damn mind?”

“Maybe I am,” says Loki, putting a little more pressure on the throttle. “Well, I most definitely am. I also kinda lied to you.”

“Kinda?” The bottom drops out of Thor’s stomach. “About what?”

“I don’t have a permit.”

 _Fuck_. _Fuck this shit_. _Fuck Loki and his fucking meltdowns_. He should never have gone back. He should have kept the promise he made to himself that he’d never give that nutcase the satisfaction of engaging with his theatrics ever again. But here they are and he has to do something. Thor tries to talk some sense into his whack job of a brother but his brain kinda refuses to cooperate in the face of certain death and short of grabbing the wheel and killing them both himself, there’s nothing he can do and so the parkway turns into a freeway and before Thor is even finished to picture all the possible consequences of this trip to himself, they’re already driving southbound on the I-fucking-15.

“We’re on the Interstate,” Thor yells.

Another faint smirk appears on Loki’s lips and Thor realizes with stomach-churning clarity that he isn’t even scared. “I’m in awe of your powers of observation, brother.”

“Is this some sort of screwed misguided payback because you still think I did something wrong?” Thor screams at him because if he can’t make Loki stop the car, maybe he can get him to talk about why they’re in that damn car in the first place. “You know that you’re committing a crime right now, don’t you?” he goes on, blurting out whatever his paralyzed brain comes up with. “You’re hijacking my vehicle. You’re basically kidnapping me.”

“Someone’s been paying attention to the state’s Criminal Code. Congratulations.”

“Come on, Lokes,” Thor begs. “Tell me what I did this time or, at least, stop speeding! _Please_!”

Loki steps on the gas some more and the speedometer needle slowly inches towards ninety. “We’re twenty miles over the fucking speed limit! Slow the fuck down!” Thor screams, his voice shrill with panic and anger because at this speed, Loki’s movements get jerkier by the second. “I swear to God if we get into an accident and I break a bone and can’t finish the season, I will fucking kill you!”

Loki is grinning from ear to ear now, showing way too many of his teeth, and he’s swerving back and forth between the lanes without paying attention to the huge ass trucks on the right lane at all. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Your fucking career? Just like Dad?”

Maybe there’s truth in that but that thought is really kinda hard to reflect on while Loki is on this fucked-up suicide mission. “I just wanna live until tomorrow, okay?” Thor screeches. “Seriously, Loki! We have our whole lives in front of us and you’re about to get us fucking killed! We’re gonna end up as fucking road k— _WATCH OUT_!”

Loki just started pulling back into the left lane without paying attention to the maniacally speeding Porsche that’s been closing in on them in the rearview mirror for the past two minutes. Thor grabs the wheel with a presence of mind sharpened by pure survival instinct while simultaneously switching on the hazard light and jerks it back to the right, missing one of the trucks’ tail ends by a hairsbreadth before swerving the car into the breakout lane, every fiber of his body vibrating in apprehension. Tires screech. Horns blare.

“Take your foot off the gas!” Thor hollers but the shock of the almost-collision has fixed Loki in place for a second. “Loki!!!! Get off the gas!!!”

Loki turns his head towards him, a faint smile on his lips.

“Oh fuck everything!” Thor bends over, trying to lift Loki’s leg off the gas and put it on the floor without losing control over the wheel from the passenger seat to prevent the car from crashing into the guardrail at a fucking ninety miles per hour but the Tesla is going so fast. _Shit_ , _shit_ , _shit_ , _it’s going_ _so fucking_ _fast_! Thor gulps for breath. He tries to steady himself and the wheel while giving Loki’s calf a violent shove with his left fist. His brother’s foot slides off the pedal instantly and the car skids when Loki’s knee hits the steering wheel and it actually fucking does scrape against the guardrail with a deathly screech before Thor manages to regain control of the wheel. It takes what feels like hours but eventually, the Tesla has to start driving uphill and, finally, its engine slows and then it dies down, juddering to a stop on the breakout lane before starting to roll backwards. Thor jerks the handbrake upwards and for a few moments, he just sits in his seat, unable to breathe as trucks and cars speed by in a blur, his own heartbeat thundering in his ears. When he can be sure he’s actually gonna live, fresh oxygen streams into his lungs and he inhales and exhales three deep breaths. He glares at Loki, his anger breaking free. “What the fuck? What the hell were you even thinking? Get out now!”

He doesn’t wait for a reply. He removes his seatbelt, jumps out of the passenger seat and strides around the car. “What the hell?” Thor keeps on screaming as he opens the driver’s door. He unbuckles his brother, pries his fingers off the wheel and yanks him out of the driver’s seat by the neckline of his shirt. “You almost got us killed, you fucking lunatic!” He shakes him, shoves him against the car with a loud thud and then punches his chest, his arms, his shoulders. He punches him until his own knuckles hurt from bruising against Loki’s protruding bones and in his blind fit of rage, he doesn’t even realize how much he’s hurting him. Doesn’t notice the horns blaring at them. “What the fuck was this? Say something!”

When Loki still doesn’t reply, that damn smile still on his lips, he slaps him across the face because that’s how his abusive shithead of a father taught him to deal with emotional conflict. “Snap out of it and _answer_ me! Why do you always have to freak out like that? And you seriously wonder why nobody wants to spend time with you? You’re a ticking time bomb, for fuck’s sake! Why can’t you just be _normal_?”

That, at last, gets a reaction in the form of a chuckle. “I knew it,” says Loki, his voice like ice, snapping Thor out of his rage and leaving him with the horrific realization of what just happened. Of what he just did.

Loki locks eyes with him for a second and, _dammit it all to fucking hell_ , he looks almost amused—nope, scratch that, he basically _admitted_ that he finds a beating amusing—but then, suddenly, his eyelids flutter and his shoulders slump and he lowers his head, his eyes fleeing Thor’s, and then his body begins to tremble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, do y’all hate Thor now? Or maybe me? 
> 
> By the way, he’s driving stick shift because it fits him well, I think, to want to have control over the machine and the acceleration process and so forth. Yup, random info right there. 
> 
> Yes, this might be called an incident too, I KNOW. As I said, the fic was originally called “The Incident” and I kept it up for the countdown even though, of course, there are several big incidents leading up to one huge incident in the end. Just like in the actual movie *ahem*
> 
> @Akira: Your comment about wanting to know more about the voices encouraged me to write more about them and the cave in the next two chapters, which, in turn helped me to reset the pace of the chapters and make more satisfying cuts after each one; which is something I’d been struggling with, so thank you.
> 
> Oh, and you don’t have to wait long, actually, the next chapter is almost edited too, so you’ll get it soon if I get a few comments in return *wink*


	19. Loki doesn’t deserve easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor tries to understand what is going on with his brother and he learns something deeply unsettling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your positive feedback! It was heartwarming and very motivating, so here's the next chapter. Please mind the tags tho xoxo

Even after what feels like an eternity, Loki still can’t force his body to move because, this time, his mind didn’t whiten like it did all the other times before when he kinda faded in and out of reality in blurs of white losing access to his consciousness. This time, there was just one single, blinding flash of white yanking him out of his body and transporting him right back to the last place on this godforsaken planet he wants to be. The consciousnesses-converging cave. Well, technically, there isn’t much converging going on this time around because, as far as Loki can tell, he is alone. He still can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing because the place is still spooky, even without Nikias or anyone else lurking anywhere in the shadows.

When he woke up this morning, Loki was terrified to realize that four whole days have passed since he provoked his father into flipping his lid—four days shrouded in white with a few hazy fragments of memory here and there and way more blank space in between—but then he was, for once, entirely alone inside his head for a few hours. He was himself. _Entirely_ himself. He was actually kinda okay. He talked to his Mom, told her he was sorry. She kissed him on the forehead, told him he didn’t need to be. Ruffled through his hair. Pulled him into a hug. Made him breakfast. Challenged him to a Sudoku race. Went to the doctor. Thor came home too. Came home as if he was actually living there again and no one clattered into his head to badmouth his big brother when Loki’s heart made a tiny little leap of joy at the realization. They actually got to spend some time together. He actually got to put Thor’s gullibility to the test again and, damn, that big teddy bear-ish dumbass believed him instantly even though Loki didn’t even put any effort into the lie. They had a good time. Loki actually thought they were going to be okay. Finish the driving lesson, go home, watch a movie together maybe.

 _Yeah_ , _right_.

Things aren’t ever that easy because Loki doesn’t deserve easy. He only deserves crazy. He only deserves fucked-up. He only deserves being catapulted right back into that fucking cave without even having fallen asleep. That’s the worst thing really, knowing that he didn’t actually fall asleep. Because he was driving and he didn’t just … You don’t just fall asleep when you’re driving, right? No, if anything, you zone out for a bit but … If he didn’t fall asleep, he can’t actually be dreaming and if he is neither asleep nor dreaming, this means that this here must be real. The stonewalls around him, the waterfall rippling in the background, it’s not a dream and that means he must be _conscious_ and if he’s actually conscious, then why the hell is he no longer driving Thor’s Tesla and if he isn’t, then who the hell is, and, _holy shit_ , let Thor be okay. _Please let him be okay_. He screams for help again, he’s already done that, but no one came before and no one comes now.

The cave remains empty.

Loki squeezes his eyes shut again, pleading with whoever cares to listen to let him wake up but then again, if he isn’t dreaming, he can’t actually wake up. There’s still a chance that he is dreaming, though, because who the hell knows what it is that his mind actually does? His mind is the maziest fucking maze of all the mazes in the entirety of the universe after all. The only problem is that it doesn’t _feel_ like a dream. Not even a lucid dream, no, it feels real to every single one of his senses but that’s probably also what makes hallucinations seem real to psychotics so _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_. His number is up, glaring in blood red neon, and panic creeps up on him once more.

But panic doesn’t solve anything, does it?

In the end, Loki gives up and his body does too, allowing him to walk into the passage leading to the cave’s mouth and the rich green jungle type of landscape that lies outside because he knows he won’t find a way out of here and back into reality if he stays. Sure, he could of course try to run directly into the walls of the cave Harry Potter style but, even if being here is beyond fucked up, Loki knows he’ll just slam into cold hard rock because there isn’t any magic at work in this place. For better or for worse, he knows that this cave is somehow real.

He walks slowly, assuring himself that Thor is going to be okay. Thor is always going to be okay. He’s basically the real life embodiment of a comic book superhero wearing impenetrable armor. He just doesn’t get hurt. That’s just not the way it works.

Loki reaches the mouth of the cave and takes a deep breath before he steps out into a strange world that looks like a crossing between Tarzan, Pandora from the Avatar movies and Timon and Pumbaa’s abode in the Lion King with a few tree houses and wooden pendant bridges poking out of this weird jungle’s canopy in the distance.

 _Huh_.

Without wasting another thought on how unprepared he is for this level of messed up, Loki starts walking.

* * *

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Thor mumbles, still terrified by how little control he just had over himself, by how he turned into their Dad without even noticing. “I’m sorry, Loki.” Tears spring to his eyes and he pulls his brother’s trembling body into a hug. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry.”

“I messed up,” Loki whispers against his shirt.

“Yeah but … I shouldn’t have hit you that hard. Fuck, I shouldn’t have hit you at all. I’m sorry.” Thor releases him from the hug to look at his face. Loki shyly glances up at him through a few strands of loose hair and tries to stifle a sob into a quiet whimper but he fails and his lips begin to quiver. “I am so sorry, Loki, I don’t even know what to say.” Thor cups his cheek. “Gosh, I’m so sorry, I …”

“It’s okay.” He tries to smile. “It happens.”

“No, it’s not okay and it should never happen,” says Thor, his thumb stroking over his brother’s cheek. “Not ever, do you hear me? And I promise you it won’t happen again.” He promises himself that it won’t. That he will not turn into his father. That he will see a therapist himself if that’s what he needs to do to get his fucking temper under control. He tries to breathe.

“Just get us out of here,” Loki begs. “Please?”

Thor nods and watches Loki walk around the hood on wobbly legs before he slumps into the passenger seat, leaning against the backrest and buckling himself with shaking fingers. Thor himself is still shaking when he sits down on the driver’s seat. He draws a sharp breath, trying to get his breathing back to normal. When he is remotely satisfied that he won’t have a heart attack, he starts the car, accelerates on the breakout lane and merges back into the Interstate traffic when there’s a large enough gap.

“I’m sorry I can’t be normal,” Loki whispers after a long while when they’re already heading back in Northern direction, his voice suddenly creepily childlike.

"I never should have said that." Thor takes his eyes off the road for a second and sees that he also _looks_ like his baby brother again, and he thinks about what he read about dissociating and regression and flashbacks after talking to Dr. van Dyne. He still has a hard time understanding let alone believing any of it. Yes, Loki’s mood changes drastically sometimes but he’s still his brother. All these different Lokis are still somehow his brother. The kid version reminds him of the summer weekends they spent at their Malibu beach house though and of how much he misses that Loki. Suddenly, he thinks about what it’d be like to spend a day with that Loki again. It’s selfish probably and he knows he should take Loki back home to their Mom as soon as possible after what just happened. He also knows that his coach will lose his fucking shit if Thor misses tomorrow morning’s practice when he has a game on Saturday and even as he thinks about that, he begins to realize that maybe Loki was right that he kinda neglected everything else because of the Rebels just like their Dad neglected everything because of Asgardia. Maybe he really needs to fix that. Maybe his brother is more important. “Look, I’m sorry we can’t go to Malibu today. It’d take us about five hours to get there but how about we go to the lake cabin instead?”

Loki gazes at him, eyes wide. “What cabin?”

“Our cabin down in Cottonwood Cove? The one Dad didn’t want to buy at first when Mom wanted it but ended up loving?” There’s still no recognition in Loki’s eyes. “What, y-you don’t remember?”

Loki shakes his head and dread settles into the pit of Thor’s stomach because it’s the cabin Frigga took him to when he was sick as a child sometimes and where they spend whole days together and how can he possibly forget that? “Is it nice?”

Thor shudders at his brother’s choice of words and the tone of his voice and the general fucked-up-ness of Loki’s mind. _You can’t protect him from his own brain_. “Y-yes but maybe that isn’t a good idea. Not today.” He is surprised to hear his own voice and diction change as he adjusts to Loki’s sudden shift to a more childish version of himself. “Let’s just get you home, okay?”

“I don’t wanna go home,” Loki repeats.

Thor pauses, groping for a reason Loki would accept. It takes him a while but then he triumphs inwardly. “We don’t even have the keys to either the cabin or the beach house, Lokes. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, we do,” says Loki and produces their Mom’s key chain with the red kitsch ass tag reading ‘vacation homes’ that has a smiling sun wearing sunglasses next to it.

 _There you go_. He suspected as much, didn’t he? _That shifty little shit_. “You actually tried to trick me into this.” Loki shrugs. “You seriously had to go all kamikaze on us for a day at the beach? Why do you always have to make such a fucking drama out of everything? Why can’t you just ask me to spend time with you like a normal person?”

“Can you take me to the beach, brother?” Loki asks and the question sounds so innocent and so sincere that Thor’s heart gives a lurch. “Please?”

“To the lake,” he brings himself to say.

A shy smile appears on Loki’s lips. “Okay.”

“Seriously though, Lokes, what the hell,” Thor gasps because he has still no fucking clue what just happened, let alone how to deal with any of it. “You’re the most intricate person I know. And that says a lot considering that I’ve been friends with Tony Stark for sixteen years.”

Out of nowhere, Loki starts giggling. “Since when are you using words like ‘intricate’?”

“Shut up! I’m going to college, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, to play football,” Loki says in that weird giggly little-kid-brother-voice.

“Shut up,” Thor says again but he ends up breaking into laughter because his brother is right and if he’s right, he can tease him all the way he wants. He can do whatever he wants _anyway_ because this is the first time in years Thor heard him laugh like this and seeing that smile is all that matters. It doesn’t even occur to him just how crazy his own reasoning is considering what just happened.

“I really am sorry,” Loki says after another pause. “Dad says I keep making things difficult for everyone.”

“You are,” says Thor. “But you also have a few screws loose up here,” he continues, reaching for his brother’s head and playfully tapping against his temple, “so I guess it isn’t really your fault.” Loki doesn’t look convinced. “But Mom found you a good therapist, didn’t she? She seems cool.”

Loki’s eyes light up. “Yes, she’s nice.”

“See? Everything’s gonna turn out fine, I’m sure,” says Thor because he’s a gullible dumbass and a hopeless optimist and because he’s too inexperienced to react to Loki’s inexplicable changes in behavior any other way than by just playing along and hoping for the best.

* * *

When they arrive at the cabin after stocking up on toiletries, frozen pizzas and snacks at the nearest convenience store as if they were ten years old again—Loki actually insisted on buying a thirty pouch carton of Capri Sun along with a bag of jellybeans—it’s already closing in on five. Thor watches his brother exit the car and gaze at the wooden structure that, seemingly hugged by a pair of cottonwood trees stretching their branches towards it, sits on top of an elevated rock formation from which you can take a header into Lake Mead. He inspects the sight with wide eyes, lips slightly open.

 _Nope_ , thinks Thor. _This Loki here is seeing the cabin for the first time_. His stomach churns. _Fuck_. _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_. _We should get our asses home right now_.

“It _is_ nice,” Loki says.

“It is,” Thor mumbles as he walks around the car to inspect the damage on the passenger site that he definitely won’t be able to hide from his Mom if he wants to drop Loki off before tomorrow morning’s practice. He sighs and takes the grocery bags out of the trunk. “Come on, I’ll show you around the inside. Maybe it’ll jog your memory.”

Not that there’s much to show. The cabin is the smallest of his parents’ three vacation homes and it is all dark wood on the inside with white rugs on the floor and a living slash dining area with two anthracite couches around a small marble table and a dark oak bar table with four white chairs a little further back and, even further back around the corner, a kitchenette with anthracite counter tops. Loki flops himself onto one of the couches as Thor stows the groceries away. “It’s cozy.”

“Bedrooms and the main bathroom are upstairs in case you want to check them out,” Thor points out with a jerk of his head but Loki doesn’t seem particularly interested. “I’m just gonna go check real quick if I still have swim trunks up there that still fit me or else I’ll have to take a dive into the water in my boxers.” He grunts because he didn’t think of looking for any at the convenience store. “Considering you planned this, you’re probably already wearing yours underneath, huh?”

Loki shakes his head. “Actually, I don’t wanna go swimming.”

“You don’t wanna go swimming?” Thor echoes. “Seriously?! Then what the hell did you wanna go to the beach with me for?”

“To hang out?” asks Loki, wrapping his arms around himself when Thor’s voice gains strength. “Just like you wanted?”

Thor tries to make his words softer. “We could’ve hung out at home, you know.”

Loki shakes his head.

“Why not? I mean, Mom tried to get you to leave the house with her this whole time and you wanted to stay home, right?” He locks eyes with him and Loki squirms under his gaze. “What changed?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Thor forces himself to be patient. “Well, try me.”

His brother is silent for so long that Thor is sure he’s gone back into turtle-pulling-into-its-depression-shell mode. “Sometimes, I remember things that happened in the house,” Loki whispers and, suddenly, he looks so forlorn on that couch that Thor doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Nothing ever happened in the beach house.” He pauses, eyes flitting across the room.

Dr. van Dyne told them that what Loki is going through are probably instances of dissociation and that the night terrors he experiences are basically PTSD flashbacks triggered by something that makes him relive traumatic childhood experiences. That was about all he heard because Frigga led her to another room afterwards but they agreed that Thor was to accompany Loki to one of the first sessions in October. Thor has done a bit of googling on the subject, well, he tried, but even if it all makes at least a little sense below the surface of his consciousness, his brain still refuses to believe any of it because he still can’t begin to guess who or what actually _traumatized_ his little brother. Because trauma is not only kinda a big word. It’s a giant word with giant implications. It means that something truly horrible has happened to Loki. He assumed that most of Loki’s distress comes from having been bullied or something else that had nothing to do with them but if something happened in the house … His thoughts hit a mental roadblock. He grew up in that house too. They had the same parents, the same nanny, the same housekeeper. Odin wasn’t such a dick when they were kids. He had himself under control, except for maybe the occasional smack on the ass. Thor never saw him lay hands on Loki until four days ago and Frigga … Well, maybe she did _abandon_ abandon him when she shoved him off to preschool too early to go back to work but she never neglected him. She loves him, always has, probably more than she ever loved Thor, and she wouldn’t hurt him. Not ever. Not in a million years.

And yet, someone did. He can see in the sparks of fear flickering in Loki’s eyes that someone did. Thor sits down beside him and stretches out his arm, reaching for his brother’s face as slowly as he can. When Loki doesn’t jerk away, he gently clasps his neck. He has to clear his throat before he can speak because his mouth has suddenly gone very dry. “What things, brother?”

Loki shakes his head again, more urgently this time, hugging himself tighter.

“Come on, you can tell me. Did anyone hurt you or”—Thor tries to swallow the bile rising in his throat when he thinks about the cause most often associated with childhood trauma—“touch you?”

Loki shakes his head again but it’s a hectic, panicked movement. Alarm slams into Thor. “You mean ‘no, that didn’t happen’ or ‘no, you can’t tell me’?”

Loki gives a wail. “I’m not supposed to say.”

Forcing himself to speak in a calm voice and not shake the truth out of him despite the fury and the fear sprouting in the pit of his stomach is probably the hardest thing Thor has ever done in his life. “Why not?”

“Because we both get in trouble,” Loki whispers, his voice barely more than a breath, and then he crabwalks away to the other end of the couch, grabs a pillow, hugs it close to his chest and pulls up his legs, making himself look almost an entire foot smaller. 

“Why would _I_ get into trouble?” Thor asks as he inches closer.

The pillow comes up, shielding Loki’s face. “Because you went to Anthony’s house.”

Because he wasn’t there. Because he failed to protect him. A brick materializes in the pit of his stomach. “You think Mom’s gonna be mad at me?”

“I know she is.” Loki gulps. “You know that too.”

He does and he wonders how their parents managed to screw them up like this. He doesn’t even understand half the dynamics of his fucked-up family—that appointment with Dr. van Dyne really can’t come soon enough—but even the half he does understand is maddeningly complicated and he isn’t sure he wants to know what else there is to uncover. “Look, you don’t have to worry about me, okay? I can handle Mom. I already called her out on her bullshit. I swear I’m not gonna get in trouble and you’re not gonna get in trouble either. You can tell me what happened and neither of us is gonna get in trouble, I promise. The only person who’s gonna get in trouble is the person who hurt you, okay?” Thor assures him, still blissfully unaware of how badly he himself hurt him earlier. “They’re gonna get into the jail kind of trouble. I’ll make sure of that.”

Loki lowers the pillow a tiny little bit, his huge green eyes searching for Thor’s over the rim of the fabric. “You can’t make that promise anymore.”

His brother’s words take him aback. “Why not?”

“Because you’re not a protector anymore,” Loki says with so much conviction that Thor’s thoughts reel for a moment. “Says who?” he asks eventually because he’s done nothing but trying to protect his little brother his entire life and if anyone doubts that—

“Nikias,” Loki replies but then he startles and drops the pillow and clamps his mouth shut, eyes widening in terror.

 _What kind of name is that_ , wonders Thor. “Who is Nikias?”

“No one,” Loki murmurs through his fingers and then his eyes widen some more and his shoulders slump as if he’s trying to disappear into himself and then he buries his head between his legs. “Don’t get mad, please. Please.”

“I’m not gonna get mad,” Thor grinds out even though he’s _flaming_ mad. He’s mad at himself for treating his brother like this. He’s mad at whoever this Nikias person is who succeeded in making Loki believe he wouldn’t look out for him anymore. He’s even more mad at everyone else who hurt him, _wait_ , _no_ , _that it isn’t true_ , _is_ _it_ , _no_ , he’s livid because he lost it. That’s what’s driving him absolutely crazy, he shouldn’t have hit him, and he wants to smash something to pieces, but he can’t let his rage out, not now, not with Loki being like this, he needs to calm down for his scared, trembling little brother’s sake. Thankfully, his protective instinct is still stronger than his temper and, through sheer force of will, he manages to stifle his rage to be there for his brother. “Look, I’m not mad, okay Lokes?” Thor asks softly. “Please, look at me.”

Loki slowly raises his head and it makes Thor feel sick to his stomach that he terrified the crap out of him with his fucking temper. “I’m not mad at you,” Thor assures him, reaching for his cheek, reaching to comfort him with his touch as he used to be able to do when they were kids. “I’m mad at myself for hurting you and I’m still sorry. Fuck, that word is so useless and cheap. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.” He takes his brother’s face into both of his hands and gently presses his forehead against Loki’s. “I love you, okay? I promise I’ll be better.”

Loki shoots him a quizzical glance, as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with the apology and Thor’s stomach gives another lurch. “Look, if you don’t want to go swimming, that’s alright. We could watch a movie or—”

“You can make the pizza,” Loki suggests and it isn’t until Thor walks towards the kitchenette that he realizes that his brother never once called Tony Stark Anthony before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, yes, Thor is a spoiled little rich kid brat going like “Oh, there isn't much to see because it’s just the cabin lmao it's just the sMaLLesT oF oUr VaCaTiOn HoMeS” at his core. Not like it's a beach house or anything. Pfft. For the interior, I took some inspiration from cabins that look like the one in the link, in case you are interested:  
> https://www.booking.com/hotel/us/lake-nantahala-smoky-mountain-cabins.en-gb.html
> 
> Slight teaser: In the next chapter, we're finally gonna meet The Voice!!! :)
> 
> See y'all soon, I hope x


	20. Maddeningly unhelpful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor uncovers more secrets while Loki explores his inner world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so very much for your support! I received so many amazing comments over the past days and I can't put in words how much they mean to me. So here's the so far longest chapter of this fic for you <33

It’s almost eight thirty when Thor finishes the evening swim he took to clear his mind after Loki fell back asleep after dinner. Much to his relief, Loki ate an entire pizza by himself, drank two pouches of Capri Sun and then emptied the jellybean bag onto his plate to carefully pick out all the passionfruit, coconut and blueberry ones for dessert as if he somehow tried to compensate for weeks of not eating properly. As soon as he was done with the jellybeans, he made himself comfortable on the couch and fell asleep after about five minutes. He’s still lying where Thor left him, curled up against the backrest, nose half-buried in the cushion, snoring faintly. Seeing him like this, Thor wonders if he ever saw his little brother sleep on his back or on his belly with his limbs sprawled away from him like a normal person but no image comes to him. As far as he can recall, Loki has always rolled himself into this tiny little ball of angst whenever he went to sleep. Not that Loki is actually tiny, though. He’s five feet nine and he’s probably gonna grow some more but he still manages to make himself look incredibly small when he sleeps. Like a child. Thor gulps. Loki is still hugging the pillow he spilled tomato sauce on because, as if he really transformed back into a kid version of himself, he was suddenly unable to eat without getting tomato sauce all over his cheeks and fingers and, unfortunately, the furniture. Once more, the thought reminds Thor of how they were never allowed to eat on that couch when they were little and this time, he can actually bring himself to check in with their Mom, which he hasn’t done since they left the house.

 _She probably had five heart attacks already_ , Thor thinks as he tears his mind away from Nikias and whoever hurt his brother and the fact that some of Loki’s episodes apparently make him go backwards in age. His phone is still in the car and he jogs outside to retrieve it along with the emergency powerbank he keeps in his glove compartment. His heart sinks because, of course, Frigga blew it up with seventeen calls and a couple of messages. _Seventeen_! _Holy fuck_! He exhales a breath to steel himself and calls her back. Frigga picks up after the first ring, greeting him with a hysterical screech. “ _Where the hell are you_?”

“Language, mother,” Thor grumbles.

“ _This isn’t funny_! _Have you seen your brother_?!”

“I’m fine, thanks for asking. How are you?”

“ _Thor_ , _please_!”

He lets out a breath. “Loki is with me, Mom. Relax.”

Frigga sighs a sigh of relief but she doesn’t relax. Not when it comes to Loki. “Are you at your apartment? Should I come get him?”

Glancing at Loki’s sleeping frame as he walks back into the cabin, Thor considers lying to her about their whereabouts but, deep inside his heart, he knows that he won’t be able to pull it off. “No, we, uh, went on a little road trip.” _What a euphemism_.

“A road trip.” She sounds surprised, terrified, confused, angry; maybe a little bit of everything. “Why? Where to?”

“Loki changed his mind about wanting to go to the beach house but since that’s too far away, we, uh, compromised on Cottonwood Cove.”

Frigga lets out an astonished gasp. “How come he changed his mind?”

That’s a pretty damn good question, isn’t it, but Thor has no answer whatsoever to it because there’s no reasonable explanation for why the fuck this day happened or why Loki suddenly seemed perfectly himself for two hours tops before losing his shit again. _Dissociating_ , he corrects himself, trying to erase his father’s scornful ableist voice from his mind. “I guess he finally wanted to spend some time with me after all,” Thor settles on saying.

“Oh.” Another half-surprised, half-dismayed exclamation. “But if that was the case, why didn’t you answer my calls?”

“Because I left my phone in the car,” Thor tries. “Look, I know that you pro—”

“Never mind, Thor. I’m on my way,” Frigga snaps and Thor can hear the traces of disappointment and disbelief and shock in her words and, honestly, he can’t even fucking blame her.

“There’s no need for you to drive out here tonight, Mom,” Thor begins because, even if he understands her position, for some reason the prospect of her showing up in the middle of the night and freaking Loki out with her overprotectiveness suddenly agitates the hell out of him. “Loki is already asleep. We’re fine.” _We’re fine if you ignore meaningless little details such as Loki changing from my brother to this crazy ass psychopath with a death wish and then to this frightened, traumatized teenage-child-mess sleeping on the couch right now within less than two hours_. _Meaningless little details such as us barely escaping death on the Interstate and me going all Dad on him because he almost got us killed_. He suppresses a gulp. “I’ll drop him off tomorrow morning, I promise. Here, take a look.” Thor switches to video call and shows her life footage of Loki lying curled up on the couch, lips slightly open, facial muscles twitching. “See?”

Frigga tries and fails to stifle a sob. God, how old she looks. Much older than fifty-two. “Is he okay?”

“He ate lunch _and_ dinner.”

“Really?” Frigga asks, a faint smile smoothing her aged, worried face.

“Yes,” says Thor, trying to reassure her with a smile of his own. “And I swear I’ll take him back home to you first thing tomorrow morning.”

She still looks rather unconvinced. “Are you sure he’s going to be okay, honey?”

“Don’t you trust me?” Thor asks back as if he didn’t flip his lid a few hours ago and almost beat the crap out of him. But then again, Loki basically admitted that he was abused as a child and she didn’t stop it. She went back to work before his third birthday and sent him off to some preschool and God only knows what happened with their nanny or Loki’s creepy-ass preschool teacher who always pinched his cheeks and sometimes came to their home for reasons Thor can’t remember. Every fiber in his body itches to confront his mother with what he found out but if he did, she’d be in her car in an instant and blindly race towards them, likely to drive herself off the road in the process. No, he definitely needs them both to sleep on it first. When she doesn’t reply, he changes the call back to audio. “Mom?”

She clears her throat. “Of course I trust you. But, please, get him a real blanket, okay? You know he gets cold easily.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Thor sighs. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I love you,” says Frigga and it sounds almost like an apology.

“I love you, too,” Thor replies before he ends the call and walks up the stairs to comply with his mother’s request, his mind abandoning the what-the-hell-happened-to-my-baby-brother-when-we-were-little issue in favor of the who-the-hell-is-Nikias issue once again. It went back and forth between these two things and Loki eating that pizza like a toddler for however long he swam in the lake, and he’s still not an inch smarter about any of it. As far as he knows, Loki doesn’t spend a lot of time with other people. He never had any real friends of his own because he was always so much smarter than the kids his age and the older kids he went to so school with didn’t want to hang out with him because he was too young, which is why Loki used to tag along after Thor and his friends instead. Which is probably one of the reasons why Tony Stark believes he actually knows Loki even though it’s blatantly obvious that no one really knows him, not even Thor. Hell, Loki himself probably doesn’t know Loki. The thought is there all of a sudden, almost knocking the air out of his lungs, and he knows it’s one of those thoughts you’ll never be able to push aside ever again if it creeps up on you.

Thor tries to focus on Loki’s choice of words from earlier to distract himself. _You’re not a protector anymore_. There’s something about that that’s nagging at him, as if being Loki’s protector is some sort of job or position that has been passed on to someone else in his absence. The only problem is that there is no one else. Loki hasn’t left his room in days. He doesn’t have any … Nikias can’t be a real person. He would know if he were, right? Yet, Thor’s mind straight up refuses to go any further than this and he gives up in the hope that Dr. van Dyne will be able to make sense of this giant mess. He pushes the door to his parents’ cabin bedroom open to retrieve one of the fluffier fleece blankets from their closet because, yes, he damn well knows that his brother gets cold easily and since he lost that much weight, the thin blankets downstairs probably won’t do when the temperatures drop for real overnight. He opens the closet to reach for the blankets on the upper shelf but then his eyes land on a built-in safe at the bottom.

 _A safe_. In a vacation home on a private property off the beaten track.

Thor wonders if that’s a normal thing to have or if his parents are just incredibly paranoid about anyone finding out about their secrets. He thinks back to how Odin went berserk when he realized Loki had been inside his office, blowing Loki’s snooping around his stuff way out of proportion. _There’s a number of good reasons I lock this door_ , his Dad said, meaning not just one. Thor sits down on impulse, crossing his legs in the process, and stares at the keypad for a moment before he remembers the combination Loki told him. Sixty-two, eighty-one. He tries the code and, even though it’s a blank, he realizes that is consists of the first digit of each of their birthdays starting with Odin’s and ending with Loki’s. Sixth of January, twenty-fourth of July, eighth of April, first of November. Following a sudden intuition, he tries it backwards.

And just like that, the door snaps open, revealing a bunch of files and other paper crap, on top of which rests a pair of hunting knives which belonged to his grandfather and which are admittedly a reasonable thing to lock up in a safe if you have young teenage boys running around. Thor reaches for the knives and takes one of them out of their sheath to trace Bor’s initials that are carved into the handle, remembering the tales his grandfather used to tell them about Norway where his Dad grew up before coming to the US to launch his insanely successful law career. Remembering how taken aback he was when they first traveled there and he saw those insanely blue lakes and rich green fields with his own eyes as a little boy. The memory stings and he allows himself a moment of grief before he puts the knife on the floor and begins inspecting the files. There’s nothing in them except for emails and bank statements and transaction receipts between people he never heard of and couldn’t care less about. Loki called it blood money, he usually calls it dubious stuff but whatever it is, except for the fact that it’s morally questionable but still paid for shit tons of cool stuff, he doesn’t give a damn about it.

What he cares about is the item on the bottom because it’s the least likely thing you’d expect anyone to lock up in a safe.

A photo album.

 _Why the hell would anyone lock a photo album in a safe_?

He pulls it out and opens it, halfway expecting to find a collection of the shady kind of photos that PIs snap of politicians and other VIPs to nail them down on a crime but it turns out to be nothing like that.

It turns out to be nothing more than a lame ass family photo album.

Thor starts leafing through it and one of the first pictures are from one of his birthday parties when he was little, and he gazes at them, wondering why his parents would lock up something so mundane. Of course, the answer is already there, somewhere in his subconscious, but he can’t really grasp it yet, so he keeps leafing through the album until the time stamp that some of those old digital cameras left on pictures if you didn’t switch the function off registers with his brain. 2003. He turns back the pages, verifying the date.

April 8th, 2003.

His fourth birthday.

 _Holy fucking shit_. What was that bit about not wanting to know what else there is to uncover?

His heart rate picking up speed, he quickly flips the pages from there to Easter to Memorial Day to Independence Day to his mother’s birthday, his mind screaming a few high-pitched no’s into his inner ear. This can’t really be true because even if Loki doesn’t look like either of them with his pitch-black hair and his brilliant green eyes _—it’s got nothing to with DNA, duh—_ there’s no doubt that Loki is their mother’s boy because she’s so protective of him— _maybe she is that protective because he isn’t hers and she’s scared that someone will take him away from her—_ and, yet, the evidence … Growing up as the son of a lawyer, Thor learned all about evidence and how evidence always tells a story. He continues to leaf through the album, staring at the photos of Frigga wearing light summer dresses and shorts and tank tops and bikinis in Rome that September. The album ends with Halloween photos, a literal day before Loki was born, and Frigga’s belly is still as flat as an ironing board.

 _You already had a son before he came along and it’d serve you well to remember that at least every once in a while_.

Before Loki came along, said his Dad, not “before Loki was born” because there’s no way in hell Frigga gave birth to a baby one day after flaunting her perfect figure in that skintight purple witch costume.

No. Loki … isn’t hers.

She isn’t Loki’s mother and knowing that a baby she didn’t even give birth to has always been more important to her than Thor stings a whole fucking lot. He tries not to cry like some pathetic needy little chick because even if she does love Loki a little more, _so what_ , that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him _at all_ , there’s enough love inside her heart for the both of them and he shouldn’t make a fuss about that. But it hurts. It hurts like a football helmet slamming into his gut and before he knows it, tears are streaming down his face.

Loki not sharing their DNA explains a lot though, like why his mind is so intricate and why he can’t seem to build muscle or grow facial hair and why he’s so pale and why he doesn’t give a damn about football or hunting or boxing or any of the other stereotypically masculine things Thor and his Dad and Granddad used to like. It also explains why he’s so much smarter and so much more sensitive than all of them together and why he’s the only one in their entire family who can actually draw and why he has these abandonment issues and extreme separation anxiety and why he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress and why he couldn’t sleep alone inside his room for an entire night until he was almost eight.

And then his anger flares up inside of him when he realizes that the whole childhood-trauma-Frigga-only-recently-learned-about narrative was nothing but another half-assed lie he didn’t see through because apparently everyone is right and he is dense as fuck. They kept lying to Loki all his life, literally watching him spiral and doing nothing as he went from crying fits and childhood nightmares to going so far out of his mind that he tried to get them killed on the Interstate only to cower in the corner like a frightened kid a few minutes after that. They sent him to a shrink when he was a kid but never even once tried to resolve any of his issues by telling him that he’s adopted.

Thor wipes away his tears, locks the safe, places the photo album under the pillow on the bed and then grabs the blanket he came for.

Loki is still sleeping downstairs, oblivious to what he just learned.

As he tucks his brother in, Thor wonders if that’s actually true. Wonders if he’s really oblivious or if finding out what Thor himself just found out is what _actually_ tipped Loki over the edge. Wondering if he knows _somehow_ but just doesn’t consciously _remember_ finding out about it in the same way he can’t seem to remember this cabin or how he blocked him or how he told Thor he wanted him to stay or how he spent the last days in bed or …

The list probably goes on and, _holy shit_ , isn’t this abso-fucking-lutely disturbing.

* * *

It takes several hours of walking aimlessly until Loki finally meets another living being in this outlandish Disney meets James Cameron kind of jungle landscape his mind took him to. He passed a few tree houses and wooden cabin-like structures hidden by palm leaves and other exotic plants on the way, yes, but even though they were furnished and gave off the impression that there’s actual people living here, they were empty. If there’s people living here, they are hiding from him. Well, that one person no longer hides but Loki technically also doesn’t _meet_ them. It’s more like he finally realizes that someone has been following him all this time.

Fear creeps up on him and he stops dead in his tracks.

Loki turns around and catches sight of the figure lurking in the undergrowth, its face obscured by the long, swirling shadows of the trees. No, it’s not a figure, it’s a man, _a very tall man_ , and he just stands there in the dark as still as a statue, arms crossed against his chest. Even though he doesn’t move, Loki can hear him breathe and his pulse quickens in fearful anticipation peppered with a few crumbs of suicidal longing. “Who is there?” Loki asks, thinking, not for the first time, that falling prey to a violent serial killer with an urge to slash his throat open wouldn’t be the world’s greatest tragedy.

“It’s me,” says the man in a vaguely familiar voice as he takes a step out of the shade, facing him. Well, technically, he’s not _really_ facing him because he’s wearing a charcoal hooded cloak that is casting even more shadows over his eye area, which makes it impossible to see his face.

“Who are you?” Loki whispers. “What are you doing here? And where is here, anyway?”

Even after what feels like a few hours, this is still a pretty damn good question.

“Do you not recognize me?” asks the man and Loki can hear the amused smile in his words. “I am the one who you so unceremoniously named ‘The Voice’.” The man poises for another moment before he removes the hood and locks eyes with him. Loki tries to swallow the lump of trepidation that is forming in his throat because, _holy fuck_ , this man looks like an older version of himself with his angular face and intense green eyes, except with longer hair. Much longer hair. Gleaming black hair that almost reaches his waist. He has pulled the top portion of it into a low ponytail and braided a few thin strands to the side of his head Legolas-style. But by far the weirdest thing is that, beneath the hood, he seems to be wearing some sort of golden plated armor that makes him look like a crossing between a Mirkwood Elf and a Viking.

“H-hi,” Loki stammers, gazing at the man belonging to the disembodied voice that has kept him company for so long now. “It’s nice to meet you, I guess?”

 _Holy fucking shit_.

“You do not really mean that, do you?” asks The Voice with a sullen smile on its, _his_ , face.

“I’m not sure,” Loki mumbles, his eyes flitting across the trees. “So, what is this place?”

The Voice answers with a counter question. “Do you not remember?”

“ _Remember_?” Loki echoes. “We’re in some sort of cartoon. This isn’t a _real_ place to remember, is it?”

“It is,” says The Voice. “And it is your creation.”

“My _creation_? What? Am I a God now?” Loki huffs a snarky laugh but it slowly dies when he remembers that one palm tree in the back of his parents’ yard, the one with a marking in the bark that always reminded him of a vertical rock crevice. Suddenly, he can almost see himself as a toddler, standing in front of that majestic tree rising out of the bed of bushes and tropical plants surrounding its stem. See himself glancing up at it while Thor played ball by the pool with Tony fucking Stark, glancing up at it in awe because he was convinced there was a fantasy world behind it that he could access through that crevice-shaped opening. A fantasy world like this one he could travel to whenever … whenever … Waves of dread surge against the walls of his stomach and he instantly shoves the thought away. “Just … let me go back home, okay?” Loki asks because somehow, even after hearing a few different voices and Nikias having been pretty bossy to say the least, The Voice still strikes him as the one who’s in charge.

“Oh, I’m not the one who is keeping you here.”

 _Dammit_. “Then who is? And where is here?” Loki asks again. “Where _are_ we?”

“Your brain keeps you here but it really is too early for you to learn anything else,” says The Voice, his eyes like emerald daggers waiting to be thrown at him, before he turns away again. “You are not yet ready.”

“Ready for what?” Loki asks as he follows this strange man deeper into the jungle even if he is scared shitless because this is by far the craziest thing he ever experienced. The man doesn’t reply though, just keeps walking. “I’m kinda sorry for naming you ‘The Voice’,” Loki tries. “It’s not particularly original, I know.”

“It fulfilled its purpose.”

“What’s your real name? No wait, let me guess,” Loki interrupts himself. “It’s something medievally gallant like Goliath or Aragon.”

The Voice doesn’t reply but there is a faint grin playing on his lips as he turns back around. “You don’t need to know my name.”

“Why not?”

“Because my name doesn’t matter.”

“But I can’t just keep referring to you as ‘The Voice’ after today. You have a face now, which means you’re kind of a person, not just a voice,” Loki continues as if this whole conversation isn’t totally fucked-up. “And if you live in my head, I have a right to know who you are and why you’re there.”

“Understanding will come to you in time, I promise.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re maddeningly unhelpful?” Loki grumbles and he is quite sure that Captain Jack Sparrow once used those last two words.

“I am fairly certain you will re-evaluate my helpfulness the next time a teacher summons you to that white board you hate so much.”

Loki blows out a defeated breath. “Yeah, about that. Thanks for … sticking up for me, I guess?”

“I am here to protect you, Loki. That is my sole purpose. Apart from that, I can’t yet tell you why exactly we exist because it would be too overwhelming.” The Voice locks eyes with him in an attempt to stare him down but somehow, Loki is no longer as intimidated as he was a few minutes ago; even if The Voice is still fucking imposing.

“Fine but if you exist to protect me, why do you always have to be such a show-off?” Loki asks. “Like, _you’re_ asking for trouble but _I’m_ the one who gets beat up. How’s that protecting me? How’s that even _fair_? It’s _my_ body!”

“I told you it’s our body too.”

Loki freezes, his palms turning sweaty, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. After hours of leaving him to his own devices, they are suddenly here, both of them. They really fucking are, and they both have faces and bodies and they’re talking to each other just as they did when his Mom drove him to the appointment with Dr. van Dyne but this time he can _see_ them as if they were actual fucking people. Actual fucking people he has to deal with if he doesn’t find his way back soon and, _holy freaking fuck_ , what did he ever do in his past life to deserve such a draconian punishment in this one?

“Nikias,” snarls The Voice.

“Surprise!” Nikias smirks a nasty smirk, his pitch-black eyes glistering with malice. He’s wearing the same leather attire he did last time but traded his burgundy shirt for a charcoal one and Loki realizes with no small amount of terror that he’s probably living in one of those treehouses furnished with wardrobes and other stuff that he passed earlier when he isn’t busy converging with Loki’s consciousness and making his life a living hell.

The Voice narrows his eyes at him. “What have you been up to, hm?”

“I had to take care of something.” Nikias shrugs before he focusses his attention on Loki, black eyes glinting. “I was right about Thor,” he informs him with that creepy smirk that Loki wants to wipe off his face but there is no time for that. "You will see."

 _Thor_.

 _Oh my God_.

If Nikias was the one in control after he came here … Loki turns on his heel and he bolts, _runs_ , _runs_ , _runs_ , his heart slamming against his ribs and he’s going half-blind with fear that Nikias will come after him, knowing instinctively that he will and that there is no escaping them but that doesn’t matter right now, _what matters is Thor_. Loki cuts through leaves and branches, suddenly knowing exactly which way to go, _which is weird_ , _isn’t it_ , because he wandered seemingly aimlessly for hours, but the knowledge is _there_ somehow and he keeps running, his lungs catching fire, _doesn’t matter_ , _please let Thor be okay_ , he doesn’t slow down until the jungle clears in front of him and he can finally see the mouth of the cave.

“Hi, Loki.”

The child voice.

Loki’s jaw gapes open.

The child voice belongs to a girl.

A girl squatting in front of the cave in a light green summer dress with matching Converse high tops and a bun hairstyle consisting of two little balls on the top of her head. _Damn_. Loki remembers how he imagined himself as a girl when he was little because he figured if he were a girl it wouldn’t disappoint his father so much that he cried all the time.

“Hi,” Loki replies in a quivering voice. The girl rises to her feet and smiles at him but her eyes are so full of pain that tears spring to his eyes. She walks up towards him and takes his right hand in both of hers, squeezing it gently. “It’s okay to cry,” she assures him, which soothes him but also unnerves him because she can’t be more than three years old and _what the fuck is this godforsaken place!!!_

Loki nods hesitantly, unsure what to say, unsure if words would even come out at this point, even if he tried. “I-I need to go back to m-my brother.”

“I know. He’s worried about you.”

Loki swallows but there isn’t enough spit in the world to dissolve the lump in his throat.

“He’s really super worried and I am sure he wants to hug you,” the girl continues and the memories of Thor holding him when they were children wrench a hysterical sob from Loki’s throat.

“That’s okay too, you know. Hugs feel so good.”

Loki nods and tries to smile but his lips won’t obey him, so he just pushes past her and walks back into the cave, murmuring a hoarse goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if this worked because, to me, Loki's POV felt rather disruptive, which is why I thought about splitting this up into two chapters but then again, the single parts would have been rather short and I also wanted this kind of mirror type chapter where they both do some discovering, each in their own way. Whew. Sometime, when I finish a chapter, I feel completely depleted because this fic is really hard work emotionally.
> 
> Now, let's see what happens when Loki wakes up, yes?!


	21. That’s how Loki calmed down when he was little

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki wakes up the following morning and has to piece together what happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, first of all, a heads-up: I catapulted myself into a whole ass anxiety attack writing this, so be prepared that this is gonna be an intense read. I mean, maybe. Just because it was intense for me to write, it doesn't necessarily have to be as intense for you to read but I'm just saying. Second, this is the first time ever that I wrote a chapter from both Loki's and Thor's POV and I'm not quite sure if it works; mainly because I've never attempted it before but there was no other way to write this one. I tried several different things but in the end, I decided to stick with keeping both of their POVs.
> 
> But now, without further ado, there's tons of brotherly feels ahead. Enjoy?! Well, kinda. 
> 
> And, as always, please mind the trigger warnings. I don't want to upset anyone x

**_Thursday, September 26th, 2019_ **

**_  
3 days to the incident_ **

The first thing Loki sees when his eyelids finally flutter open in the reality outside his head again is anthracite fabric he doesn’t immediately recognize. His body is holding a white pillow he doesn’t immediately recognize either and a terror he knows very well by now slams into him. He raises his head, just a little, trying to move as carefully as possible to prevent giving off the impression that he already woke up. He needs to make sure where he is and how he got to that place before anyone speaks to him because, well, blackout. And this time it’s even worse because usually he wakes up at home and usually he wakes up without the recollection of having talked to The Voices in some sort of fantasy world that had such a disturbingly real feel to it.

Nikias isn’t that patient, though. He followed him, of course he did, and he jerks Loki’s body— _their body_?—into a sitting position and Loki winces, not entirely sure what registers first. The throbbing pain in his arms and shoulders when he moves or the realization that he’s in the cabin by the lake that Frigga took him to when he was sick as a child to wrap him up in a blanket and cuddle him on her lap and sit with him outside the porch, gazing out onto the water, telling him stories. The memory fills his chest with warmth and he inwardly thanks the child for taking over and accepting his mother’s offer to spend some time in their vacation home, even if it’s not the Malibu beach house they drove to in the end. Apparently, she’s the only Voice that doesn’t make crap decisions like lying or pushing Thor and his Mom away, the only one making his life better when she’s there, and, the outrageousness of her existing in the first place aside, Loki appreciates that a lot. It’s weird that he’s here though, isn’t it, considering that Nikias mentioned Thor and the girl didn’t contradict him when he said he needed to go back to his brother when there’s no way in hell that Thor would be here. It’s the middle of the week and he definitely wouldn’t skip practice to go on a trip with them, particularly not if the Rebels’ app’s schedule is correct and he’s playing away this upcoming weekend.

But then again, there isn’t a single thing about his life that _isn’t_ weird, right?

He’s probably missing another chunk of what happened around him after the drive yesterday— _or whenever_ , _maybe it isn’t even the middle of the week anymore_ , _who knows_ —but, as disconcerting as that usually is, if the child Voice was in control, he can at least be sure she didn’t do anything upsetting. The realization puts Loki at ease and the thought of having Frigga all to himself even makes him happy. For a brief moment, Loki forgets where he was, forgets The Voices and their faces, and he smiles to himself but when he does, another hot, throbbing ache registers on his cheek. He touches the spot and winces. 

It’s swollen. 

Loki gulps, swings his legs off the couch and tiptoes into the downstairs bathroom, softly closing the door behind him. There are no locks and no keys here, which means he has to be careful. He takes a deep breath before he looks into the mirror. 

_Damn_.

His left cheek is swollen and bruised under his eye, a nasty red blotch with a few bluish spots in their first stage of development. He touches it again, winces again. _Yikes_. With a careful glance at the door, Loki removes his shirt, his shoulder exploding with pain when he pulls his arms over his head. _Double yikes_. There’s still a few scabbing cuts on his arms and upper belly but most of the carnage has healed into ugly ass dark red scars that’ll probably need years to fade into skin color, which means he’ll forever be ugly. _Body art my ass_. He still can’t believe he came up with that line. Apart from those, there’s bruising on his collarbone, his chest, his arms. Red swellings, light red fingerprints darkening into shades of a bluish-red on his arms that will probably turn purple at some point and then, at an even later point, assume the color of the blue-yellowish bruising in the form of fingerprints that is underlying the red ones.

 _Huh_. 

Meanwhile, Thor’s three-thirty alarm goes off upstairs and he rolls over on his parentsʼ king-size box-spring bed where he fell asleep on the photo album around nine thirty, emotionally drained by the sheer number of disturbing things his mind had to process since he set foot in the house again on Friday afternoon.

Loki vaguely remembers his Dad grabbing him by the shoulders and trying to smack him, no wait, he _did_ smack him, but before he could use his fists, Thor came into the room and—

 _Yeah_ , _take a wild guess who did this to us_. 

Thor scrambles out of bed and walks into the upstairs bathroom to take a leak, his mind still half-shrouded in sleep.

“Shut up,” Loki hisses. It must have been his Dad. That’s the most likely scenario. Odin got mad because he put his brother up to that illegal driving lesson and he beat him up and then Frigga fled the house with Loki and brought him here where’s he’s safe from his father’s rage. When you hear hoofs, think horse, not zebra, right?

 _Wrong_. _Your precious big brother did that_ , _you pathetic little fuckwit_. 

Upstairs, Thor washes his hands and splashes water into his face to shake off his mental muddiness.

There’s a flash of a memory of him and Thor in the car, Loki on the passenger seat after his mind decided to simply check out of reality with him behind the fucking wheel of Thor’s fucking Tesla. Was it really Thor who drove him out here? It’s not very likely. Taking him here is a Frigga move, not a Thor move. His brother has football practice at seven am. He wouldn’t—

 _He beat the crap out of you_. _Well_ , _technically_ , _he beat the crap out of me but he thought I was you_ , _so_.

Loki can visualize him shrug and he hates the fact that Nikias really is a person. He hates him so much that tears spring to his eyes.

 _I was right about Thor_. _You will see_.

Thor reaches for his toothbrush with a yawn, his mind still too sludgy for any noteworthy cognitive output.

“No, you shut up,” Loki wails. Thor wouldn’t hurt him like that. Thor loves him. Thor protects him. Always did, always will. Thor isn’t their father. “You stop talking to me. I fucking hate you. Everything was so much better before you showed up!”

 _The only reason I showed up is because he turned your back on you_! 

“I’m not gonna talk to you anymore,” Loki whispers and, all of a sudden, there’s a hot twinge in his chest and a second later, it constricts, an invisible weight crushing the air out of his lungs and all he can think of is how Nikias will never leave him alone and how he’ll never let him have his family back and he can’t breathe and there’s no escape and Dr. van Dyne won’t fix this, she’s just a shrink, not a deity capable of wielding sorcery and magic him better, which means that he won’t ever be okay again, _he knew it_ , _this is his life_ , _there’s nothing outside the crazy_ , no, he can’t wake up and smile because he’s actually looking forward to spending some time with his family, he can’t spend a single afternoon with his brother without this fucking sonofabitch taking over and ruining it, _fuck_ , he will ruin it every single time, he’ll NEVER go away, _breathe_ , _just breathe_ , _no, let me die_ , _pleas_ e, _let me breathe_ , see how fucked this is, there _is no hope_ for him, _NO HOPE AT ALL_ , his brain is fucked, unless maybe ... “If you talk to me again, I’ll kill this body,” Loki pants, trying to breathe. “If that’s what it takes to shut you up, I’ll kill myself. Is that what you want?”

 _Not really but maybe that wouldn’t be the worst idea_. _It’d be like putting down a wretched animal because you’ll never get better anyway_.

It would be _so much_ easier. Loki knows this. So much easier. But he isn’t an animal wasting away. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy who has a world filled with actual people existing inside his damn head. He can’t just kill himself. If he does, he’ll never find out what that means.

“Loki?” Thor calls out as he jogs down the stairs in his jeans and finds the couch empty. He peers around the corner, into the kitchenette. “Brother? Loki, where are you?”

Or maybe he can because he already knows what it means, doesn’t he? It means that he’s a crazy ass psycho freak and crazy ass psycho freaks don’t deserve good things like functioning relationships. Crazy ass psycho freaks shouldn’t be alive because all they do is force their insanity upon their families and ruin everything for everyone.

Thor finds Loki in the bathroom where he’s sitting on the edge of the small hot tub, head lowered, breathing heavily and, _holy fucking shit_ , Thor can’t even tell what his brain notices first. The fact that Loki doesn’t have a shirt on or that he’s so terribly skinny that you can actually count his ribs or that his arms are littered with scabbing cuts and scars and bruises— _that’s why he didn’t want to take a dive into the pool or the lake_ , _fuck everything_ —or that he is scratching himself. That he is actually fucking clawing into a scabbing wound very close to his artery with his fingernails, ripping it back open, further open, drawing blood.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Thor drops down on his knees in front of him and grabs the wrist doing the damage. “Stop hurting yourself!”

Loki flinches and his head snaps up and a wave of nausea washes over Thor when he realizes that he hit his little brother hard enough to give him a shiner with his football ring. He takes a closer look at Loki’s arms and chest where he punched him and when he realizes that _he_ bruised his fragile body like that, there’s actual vomit or bile or whatever it is shooting up his throat. He swallows it down. He can feel sorry for himself later. First, he needs to calm Loki down because Loki’s eyes are as wide as dinner plates, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Brother?”

“Yes, I’m here,” whispers Thor, tears of guilt and shame clawing at his throat as he reaches for Loki’s hands. “Just breathe, okay. Everything’s fine. You’re just having a panic attack.” He sits down next to him and starts pulling him into a hug.

Loki jerks away because Thor can’t see him hurting himself, he can’t know that he’s sunken so low because he thinks of him as some pathetic little emo loser anyway and if he knows, he won’t try to comfort him anymore. He’ll laugh at him, make fun of him. No, Thor can’t see. Thor can’t touch him, can’t touch his skin, can’t touch his wounds. “Wh-what are you doing?” Loki pants, his chest still too tight for even the shallowest breath.

“I’m trying to give you a hug,” Thor explains awkwardly as he loops his strong arms around his brother’s slender frame, locking him in an embrace gentle enough not to break him but still tight enough to prevent him from squirming free. Loki does start panicking for real then though, struggling in his arms, hammering his forehead against Thor’s naked chest. “Calm down,” says Thor but every nerve in Loki’s body is stretched as tight as a wire and his breath is coming out in sharp, rapid gasps. “You need to calm down!”

“Why are you hugging me?” Loki screeches.

“To calm you down,” Thor says even though it’s not really working but he hugs Loki tighter anyway, pressing him against his massive chest because that’s how Loki calmed down when he was little.

 _HE CAN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS_. “Take your fucking muscles out of my face!”

“No,” Thor whispers, his voice breaking. “I’m here for you, brother. I’m here, okay?” He wants to make it all go away, all the pain and the lies and the physical wounds he inflicted upon him and all the cuts and scratches he apparently inflicted upon himself— _he’s harming himself in other ways_ , that’s what his Mom said, didn’t she—and he wishes he could turn back the clock so that he’d never move out and never leave him alone because he should have known that Loki never _wanted_ to be left alone, he should have made him better, not worse. Or maybe it’d be enough to go back to yesterday morning to prevent them from ever getting into his car so that he’d never lay hands on him and never hurt him and never find out that he’s adopted. Oh, how much he wishes he never found that out because now they need to tell him to help him deal with his issues and it’s finally gonna push him over the edge for good and, _holy fuck_ , Loki has to talk to his therapist about how someone else hurt him when he was just a little boy and traumatized him for life and it’s gonna destroy him because that traumatized child is still alive inside of him and it came out yesterday, grabbing a pizza slice with two whole hands.

Thor sheds a few silent tears that drip onto Loki’s scalp and the realization jolts him out of his panic because it’s so strange to finally have proof that his brother’s rock-solid body is equipped with functioning tear ducts but it’s calming too because it means that Thor cares. It means he is sad because of him. He doesn’t think Loki is a sorry ass emo freak. He _wants_ to comfort him because otherwise, he would have let go by now, right?

 _He’s really super worried and I am sure he wants to hug you_. _Hugs feel so good_.

Loki’s body finally relaxes and he loops his arms around Thor to hug him back, pressing his forehead against his brother’s muscular chest. He listens to his strong heartbeat as he did when he was a kid and tears begin to spill out of his eyes and run down his cheeks in two warm and tickling streams. He chokes on a sob but Thor is there and he shushes him, holding him tightly, and that’s all that matters even if it hurts a little because of the bruises but it’s impossible to even think of asking him to ease the hug a little because it’s the first Thor hug he received in a very, very long time and he wants it to last forever.

Nikias is enraged by what Loki is doing of course and he fights very hard to gain enough control over Loki’s body to pull out of the hug and give Thor a shove but Loki fights back, desperately clinging to his consciousness as hard as he can because he won’t let that sonofabitch ruin it. Not this time. “Thor?” Loki begins in a soft whisper, his lips brushing against Thor’s skin.

“Yes?” Thor tries to release him but Loki clings to him, cupping his shoulder blades from below his armpits, pressing him close. “I need to tell you something. I mean, it’s gonna sound crazy and I think I might be losing my mind but—”

 _Don’t you dare_ , growls Nikias.

“Look, I know I called you crazy and a lunatic and all that but if you think about it,” says Thor, his mind finally coming fully awake, “if you _were_ losing your mind, would you notice? Because I don’t think you would. I think people who’re losing their minds don’t realize that they’re going crazy, like a crazy person doesn’t worry about being crazy, right? They think they’re sane. So, if you’re worried about being crazy, by definition, you can’t be crazy.”

Loki can easily ignore the fact that he doesn’t remember Thor calling him these things because his brother’s words lift an Everest-sized weight off his chest. “You are right.” Loki feels a laugh rise in his throat and he lets it out. “Why are you right? You’re supposed to be the dumb one.”

He can hear the sheepish grin on Thor’s face in his voice. “I have my moments.”

Thor tries to break up the hug once more.

“Don’t let go,” Loki begs because his brother’s body is so warm and his skin is so soft and unscarred and his heartbeat is so strong and he smells like an entire childhood family vacation. “Not yet. Please.”

“Okay.”

“The things I did,” Loki begins after a pause, “like kicking you out of my room and blocking you—”

 _Don’t you dare_. _He isn’t supposed to know_. _Ever_.

“—that wasn’t really—”

 _I said, shut up. SHUT YOUR PATHETIC LITTLE TRAP_!

“No, _you_ shut up!” Loki yells back and, of course, Thor startles and tells him that he didn’t say anything and his arms begin to unhug him and he tries to pry Loki’s hands away from his shoulders to force him to look him in the eye but Loki doesn’t want to, he wants to stay buried there, and he’s holding onto Thor, clinging to his brother’s two-hundred pounds of Teflon muscle as though his body would suddenly dissolve if he let go. “I know I … I wasn’t talking to you. I, uh … You know, I have a … like a … There’s this voice … inside of me … and sometimes … it just … it … It mean it’s not just a voice, it’s almost like a,” Loki stammers and Thor’s heart starts bleeding when he realizes how scared and embarrassed he is to talk about what’s really bothering him.

“Shshsh, it’s okay.” Thor loops his arm back around his brother’s body as he thinks of Tony’s description again but they’ve been through the you’re-not-crazy-part already and he can’t just offer “like a different personality” because if he tells Loki that, he’ll inevitably think he’s crazy because that’s how horror movies portray people who have actual multiple personalities; even if it’s different in reality. Not that he understands _how_ it is different. That’ll be Dr. van Dyne’s job to explain.

“No, it’s not,” Loki half-laughs, half-cries. “It’s horrible.”

“Yeah, I meant like … It’s okay to tell me.”

 _He won’t believe you_.

 _He’s gonna think you’re crazy_ , _a freak_ , _a psycho_. _Do you really want that_?

“Yeah, I really don’t know how,” Loki whispers and Thor can feel the tears he’s shedding roll down his abs.

“It’s alright, I think I know what you’re trying to say. You aren’t yourself sometimes and when that happens, you don’t remember what you did, right? Your therapist said—”

Loki untangles himself then and stares at him, a look of pure terror stamped across his face. “Wait, my therapist? How do you know about my therapist? You make it sound like you met her.”

Thor clears his throat. “Well, I did, actually. Mom said that we could call her in an emergency and your state was kinda emergency-ish, so she called her and she stopped by and tried to talk to you.”

 _Tried_ , Loki repeats silently.

His brother’s face loses all its previously non-existent color. He reaches for his shirt and puts it back on, eager to hide the evidence of how he apparently went against himself with some knife or whatever, his face twisting into a grimace of pain. “Wh-when?”

“Monday night,” says Thor as he marvels at the fact that he wouldn’t have been able to guess what lies beneath the fabric of Loki’s clothes in a million years. The sight still hasn’t _truly_ registered with Thor because he can’t wrap his head around the concept of someone voluntarily cutting into their own flesh and now that the scars are covered up again, his brain automatically pushes anything self-harm-related into the farthest corner of his consciousness.

Loki gulps. “Wh-what … happened?”

“When she stopped by or in general?”

Loki grimaces. “Both.”

“You slept a lot but you also had a lot of nightmares and terrors and sometimes, you just lay there staring at the ceiling. When she came, you were staring. She tried to get through to you but you just started crying or screaming like,” Thor begins and the scales fall from his eyes when something clicks together in his mind. “You know how babies cry when they’re uncomfortable? It was like that. You just lay flat on your back and screamed-cried without tears. Sometimes for like two hours straight.”

“Like a baby,” Loki whispers and he looks absolutely miserably mortified.

“Yeah, like a baby,” Thor confirms and he thinks about what Dr. van Dyne said about reliving traumatic memories. Asks himself if Loki’s real mom was a sadist who hurt him before she gave him up for adoption and he has to swallow another mouthful of vomit because everyone including him always ends up hurting Loki as if there is some sick and twisted law in the universe dictating that he needs to get hurt. He stretches out his hand and softly touches the bruise developing under Loki’s left eye, stroking it with his thumb. “Does it hurt?”

The disconnected question seems to surprise him. “A little but it’s alright,” Loki whispers as he flicks a seemingly involuntary glance down at his arms and the wounds now safely concealed by his shirt once more. Thor’s stomach churns as Loki giggles nervously. “Why?”

“Because I’m so sorry,” Thor reaffirms. “I shouldn’t have—”

Loki cuts him off with one of his you’re-a-dumbass-idiot-talking-utter-nonsense looks. “It’s not your fault.”

“Well, it was. I, uh,” Thor begins because he is fed up with their parents’ lies and their secrecy but a subconscious part of his brain makes him aware that, if he told Loki the truth, he’d also have to tell him what _he_ did and if Loki’s brain decided not to remember that, then maybe he shouldn’t know about it and it doesn’t matter anyway, because Loki isn’t listening to him anymore. His eyelids are fluttering and he squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again but his lids are still fluttering and his eyes suddenly look less green and almost gray.

“What’s going on?” asks Thor, panic slamming into him, but Loki merely raises a hand to silence him. Whatever it is he’s trying to do, he’s giving it another shot and, this time, it does work because when his eyes open again, they’re back to their usual brilliant green and Thor isn’t even sure how on earth that’s physically possible.

“Did she tell you why I was like this?” Loki asks weakly, not even trying to mask his embarrassment.

“Mom told her what happened with Dad and she speculated that Mom telling you about how they were going to take a break kinda flipped the wrong switch in your brain.”

Loki needs a second to digest his reply. “Why?”

 _Because you’re adopted and everyone knows that adopted children can’t deal with being left by anyone_. “Because of your abandonment issues, probably.”

Loki flinches from his words. “She said that?”

“No, _I’m_ saying that,” Thor replies. “But that’s okay, Lokes. You don’t need to be embarrassed because it’s not your f—”

“No, it’s not okay!” Loki screams and then he springs to his feet, raking his fingers through his hair. “It’s so easy for you to say that when you’re so fucking perfect, isn’t it, but _I_ am not okay, Thor. I’m _not_ okay! I’m this pussy ass wimp that can’t even go to school anymore! Stop telling me that everything’s gonna be okay! I’m not okay and I’m not ever gonna _be_ okay ever again!”

Loki starts pulling out his hair then, gasping and sniveling frantically, and Thor lunges towards him, grabbing his brother’s hands and, _holy fuck_ , _yes_ , Loki is so much worse than ever before, he literally just tore a wisp of hair from his own scalp with his bare hands, _what the fuckety freaking fuck_ , and Thor has no idea what he said that upset him so or what to do to calm him back down because everything he did when he was younger no longer works— _I didn’t sign up for any of this_ , _holy fucking shit_ —and he’s just standing there with Loki’s wrists gripped firmly in his hands and, _shit_ , _shit_ , _shit_ , he’s going to miss practice and his coach will go ballistic because he recruited him straight out of High School and he counts on him to lead the team in Wyoming on Saturday and how can he possibly let Coach Tyree down when he championed him for past two years but, then again, how can he let his depressed little brother down and _, holy fucking shit_ , if Loki ever finds out the truth about the adoption, he’ll probably jump off a cliff.

“I don’t wanna live like this anymore,” Loki wails. “I’m sick of being this pathetic deranged little crybaby with shit tons of issues that can’t even keep it together for a whole ten minutes!”

Thor tries to draw a breath but, suddenly, there is the invisible hand of an invisible giant around his throat, crushing it, and there’s panic and nausea clumping in the pit of his stomach and there’s dizziness and his heart feels as if it’s literally starting to burn— _that’s why they call it a heartBURN_ , _IT MAKES SENSE OH MY GOD_ —because he doesn’t know what to do, he just doesn’t know what to do or what to say, he’s all out of ideas and there is nothing he can do to stop his brother from being so fucking miserable ALL THE TIME and _WHY DID HE EVEN THINK ABOUT THE CLIFF THING_?!

Loki lowers his head and buries his face inside his elbows and he just stands there, shaking and sobbing. “I can’t take this anymore.”

“Loki, no, look at me,” Thor whispers, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat even though there’s no air and both his stomach and his chest are on fucking fire. “Don’t say that!”

“But it’s true,” Loki blubbers out.

“No, it’s _not_ true,” cries Thor and he grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him again and Loki winces and Thor flinches from himself and withdraws his hands in shock, tears stinging his eyes, clawing at his throat. “It’s not true because you’re _not_ pathetic, okay? Please, I know you’re upset but look at me. _Please_.”

Loki draws a sharp breath and then he lowers his hands, making eye contact for the fraction of a second before he casts his eyes downwards again.

“You’re _not_ pathetic,” Thor assures him, inwardly cursing himself for all those times he mentally called him a shrimp or a twig or a pussy or a drama queen. “You’re just … very sick.”

“I don’t wanna be sick anymore,” Loki howls and then he just slumps down, crumpling to his feet like a rag doll. He crabwalks to the wall, pulls up his knees and lifts his arms, hugging his head, burying his face. “You have n-no idea what this is like … What’s it like … to be me. You don’t … Just go.”

“No, Loki, I … I wanna help.”

“You can’t help,” Loki whimpers. “Just leave me alone.”

“No,” Thor whispers because if he leaves him alone, he’ll hurt himself or worse. If he leaves him alone, he’ll tell himself that Thor doesn’t care about him or maybe Nikias will tell him that. “I’m just gonna sit here and keep my mouth shut, okay?”

Thor lowers himself down to the floor at a safe distance from his brother, leaning against the wall of the hot tub, his heart still burning inside his chest, its frantic beat thundering in his ears. He tries to calm himself down, tries to breathe, tries to think of what to do next.

Before he has a chance to process what just happened or how to handle it or how to confront his Mom about everything he found out, however, he hears the front door creak, followed by the soft thud of footsteps on the wooden floor outside the bathroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, was it as painful for you to read as it was for me to write Loki trying to figure out what's going on and coming to the wrong conclusions? I hope I managed to capture his confusion and the horror of waking up with blackouts because that sensation is not an easy thing to convey and writing that "accurately" is one of the things I struggle with the most, tbh.
> 
> But .... yay, at least we got a real hug! 
> 
> @KinkyPlotBunny, I know I said Loki wouldn't try to let Thor help until after the incident but I changed my mind and let him try at least. Eventually, they'll talk it out, I swear, but Loki isn't ready yet.
> 
> @Zyxxx, yes, you were right when you said the "the real Loki" would be the most damaged in this situation.
> 
> Oh, and did I download the Go Rebels app onto my phone for research purposes? Yes, I totally did. I also meticulously checked their 2019 schedule because I'm OCD and drove myself crazy making sure that Thor would have been able to actually be there on the dates he's actually there even though I knew that no one would care about details like that but that is just who I am. 
> 
> Yes, I know that you're thinking it and you can say it. I'm pathetic because I don't have a life. But if I had, I wouldn't have that much time writing stories ;)
> 
> See y'all soon!


	22. I don’t know what to do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frigga arrives at the cabin and Thor tries to come to terms with what he's done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frigga POV because the last time we got a glimpse into her thoughts was chapter 16 and I honestly needed a change of pace from Loki and Thor because the last few chapters being inside their heads have been really intense for me to write. Originally, I started writing this part from Thor's POV too but it didn't quite satisfy me, so I changed it. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. You'll get a little more background on Loki's birth and the adoption too. Please, enjoy x

After coming home from her doctor’s appointment and walking into an empty house, Frigga was instantly worried even though Loki had seemingly dug his way out of a horrible four-day-long flashback and back into his mind when he woke up the previous morning. He was fully conscious for the first time in days and genuinely broken up about having spent so much time in bed. _Heaven forbid_ , he even apologized to her for having caused that much trouble, shattering her heart into a million pieces. She assured him he didn’t need to be sorry. She hugged him tight and he didn’t recoil from her touch as he did whenever she tried to comfort him in the past. They even spent some actual quality time together, taking their breakfast on the porch and solving Sudoku puzzles before she told him that she needed to keep this appointment, asking him if he wanted to accompany her. He declined. Told her that he was going to be okay. That he was going to engage his mind some more after all this time he spent in a haze as if his mind actually needed sharpening after solving a 16x16 Sudoku in record time. She believed him because he _seemed_ genuinely okay and genuinely himself. Believed him because she _wanted_ to believe him. Wanted to believe that her fifteen-year-old teenage son isn’t so distressed that he can’t even manage to spend any amount of time by himself at all anymore. Because she knew she’d be back in three hours tops.

Yet, when she did get back around four in the afternoon and realized he’d actually left the house, it dawned on her that she’d been deluding herself because, as always, she wanted him to be okay so badly even when it was obvious that he wasn’t because she so desperately wanted, still wants, Odin to be wrong. She wanted Loki to be okay too badly all his life probably, wanted to be one to heal him and love him and save him after the person who was supposed to love him just abandoned him in the cold on a chilly fall evening. She remained half-blind to all his symptoms for the longest time because if she had acknowledged them, fully acknowledged them, she would have had to go back to the night she came home from work on that fateful first of November sixteen years ago and picked up Loki’s limp, half-frozen, fragile little body that barely weighed four and a half pounds. She would have had to go back to that hospital and she would have had to admit to herself that Odin had been right all along. That her love would not be enough. That she could never fully heal the damage that was done before they welcomed him into their family.

To this day, the conversation she had with her husband when he joined her in the hospital is still alive inside her mind as is the rest of that day, never fading into the fuzziness that inevitably begins to blur other memories with the passing of time.

“No,” said Odin without even letting her finish because he didn’t see a baby in need of comfort. All he saw was the note Loki’s birthmother had tucked into the blanket. “If you want another child, fine. I’ll give you another child but I will not raise that girl’s boy, do you hear me? With all the drugs she’s been taking, he’ll be a mess. You don’t want to do that to yourself or to Thor. Have you thought about _him_ at all?”

She begged him. Told him that CPS would make an appearance and that the baby would end up in foster care if they didn’t take him home. Told him how _that_ would damage him. Let him in on the lie she’d told the nurses. Told him that this helpless little thing deserved a chance because he didn’t ask to be brought into this world and hadn’t done anything wrong. Reminded him how they could have prevented this from happening in the first place. Promised him that she’d be the best mother in the world, showering the baby with love. Assured him that he’d grow into a healthy and happy child if only they gave him the chance to grow up in the bosom of a loving family.

Eventually, Odin gave in. He gave Loki a reluctant chance but now, fifteen years and eleven months later, he is still holding it against her that she was wrong, that Loki “turned crazy” after all; just as he predicted he would the second he lay eyes upon him.

Frigga doesn’t even know why it’s still so impossible for her to admit to herself that he was right about Loki not being able to grow into a perfectly healthy boy after what he had to endure. She wonders if there was ever any real reason she subconsciously kept trying to prove her husband wrong because it’s not as if he would’ve suddenly wanted to get rid of him after learning to love him as a son. Yet, she always feared that he was going to tell Loki he wasn’t his biological son in that gruff, insensitive way of his. It was only a month ago that he made it clear to her that telling Loki the truth wasn’t his intention and probably never had been.

If only they’d communicated more effectively—at all—before that day instead of keeping the past under wraps because if they had, she wouldn’t have just acknowledged Loki’s mental health issues to herself; she would have acted upon them in the way she should have. It wouldn’t have taken her months of watching him suffer before she could bring herself to make the decision to get him a therapist. She wouldn’t have waited until that phone call from Principal Acker. She wouldn’t have foolishly clung to the idea that she could still heal him herself. Wouldn’t have damaged Loki in the process when all she ever wanted was to heal him.

 _Of course an empty house isn’t triggering at all for someone with a boatload of abandonment issues_ , Thor had said to her a few days ago and the phrase echoed in her head over and over again when she came home, Loki nowhere to be found. She tried to reach Loki, probably a million times, but he didn’t answer a single one of her calls. She panicked several times because, last time she walked out of the door, Loki drank half a bottle of scotch and God only knew what happened this time. She tried Thor’s cell next, with very much the same result, and she guessed then that they might be spending some time together because why else would they both ignore her?

She tried to console herself with that knowledge because, after Loki had seemed so perfectly himself, it stood to reason that he’d spend some time with his brother again, didn’t it? Maybe he even apologized to him too … Maybe …There are always a lot of maybe’s where Loki is concerned and they kept her on her toes for the entire evening. Kept her torn between the urge to storm out of the door and drive through the neighborhood to search for them and the urge to stay put so that she’d be home when they made it back. Kept her in a sickening state of concern until Thor finally took pity on her and called her back.

When he did, telling her what had happened, she was confused and maybe even a little frustrated that Loki changed his mind about spending some time away from home as soon as she left the house after four days of trying to take care of him. That he just took off with Thor to spend some time in one of their vacation homes even though she tried to get Loki to do exactly the same thing and he flat-out refused or didn’t even react to her in his dissociated state. That he ghosted her for an entire afternoon slash evening even though he—both of them—must have known that she’d worry herself half to death if they didn’t answer her calls. Of course, it wasn’t Loki’s fault that he rejected her offers in his precarious mental state. Dr. van Dyne told her as much and she instantly chided herself for the immature spark of jealousy flaring up inside of her after Thor rang off. Told herself that she should be glad he was okay and was finally spending some quality time with his big brother as well, just as she’d hoped he would. The only problem is that her boys haven’t been able to spend some quality time together without major emotional outbursts for almost a year and, even if Thor told her “he got this”, she knew she shouldn’t have left him alone with Loki. The past few days made it glaringly obvious that her twenty-year-old son can’t handle his younger brother’s mental instability and should by no means be expected to handle it.

Frigga wakes up from an uneasy sleep for the third time shortly after two in the morning, her mind starting to race again as soon as she opens her eyes, confronting her with all of that and other things.

This time, she doesn’t resist the urge to get up.

This time, she jumps out of bed, takes a quick shower, packs a few things, makes herself a coffee and climbs into her car shortly after three, momentarily oblivious to the fact that she would miss them if Thor decided to drive them back in time for his morning practice. The thought only occurs to her when she’s already halfway there, speeding down the US 95 to reach her sons as quickly as possible but, by then, it’s too late and somehow she _knows_ they haven’t yet left. Somehow, she knows that they need her, both of them. She knows it in her mother’s heart because the universe has somehow found a way to equip mothers with a very special version of a sixth sense that alerts them whenever their children are in trouble.

 _If only I never asked Thor to come back in the first place_ , Frigga suddenly thinks as she switches lanes to pass a truck. She should have left Thor alone, should have let him build his future and his career in peace because he deserves his own life in adulthood after having had to sacrifice most of his childhood and teenage years for the sake of Loki’s mental well-being. She still blames herself for making him come back. Blames herself for shifting her maternal responsibilities upon Thor once again even after she stepped down from her job to take care of Loki just because Thor managed to get Loki out of the house and food into him where she failed miserably, conveniently ignoring the fact that this accomplishment alone doesn’t mean he can handle his brother’s mood swings. Apart from that, Thor’s arrival seems to have stirred up a lot of unresolved conflict in Loki and, even if Dr. van Dyne speculated that it was the prospect of a potential divorce that stressed Loki out, Frigga still doesn’t know why exactly her sons fell out with each other or why Loki came to despise Thor like that. And now they’re alone in that cabin and God only knows what happened between them or between Loki and one of the voices inside his head or …

She’s picturing all sorts of horrible things to herself as she drives, thanking the heavens that the highway is almost empty at this hour because she is all too aware that she wouldn’t have the presence of mind to focus on dense traffic.

The first thing Frigga sees when she finally slows her Nissan to a stop next to Thor’s Tesla after the eighty minute drive is the dent and the scraped off paint on the passenger site stretching from the front fender almost to the end of the back door of her son’s car.

 _God only knows what happened indeed_.

Her stomach clenches when she realizes why exactly they ignored her calls. She reaches for her purse, jumps out of the car, runs up the stairs and pushes the door open, realizing they haven’t even locked it. _Gosh_. The cabin is unlit though and considering that it’s only four thirty in the morning, they’re probably still asleep. Which means that Thor has given up on his seven a.m. football practice even though this is arguably his most important season to date and if he chose to do that, the accident must have been—

“Mom?” Thor emerges from the downstairs bathroom in a pair of jeans, his chest bare. “Thank God,” he whispers, his face scrunched up in despair.

“So that’s why you didn’t answer my calls!” Frigga yells at him before her brain has a chance to interpret the physical signs of his distress. “You got into an _accident_?!”

“We, uh,” Thor mumbles, flicking a shocked glance outside as if he entirely forgot about the evidence sitting right here.

“What happened and why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew how you’d react,” Thor defends himself weakly, his voice trembling. “But that doesn’t matter right now. Loki … He isn’t … Thank God you’re here because I-I don’t know what to do. You need to … He’s …”

Gazing into Thor’s quivering face, Frigga realizes that she hasn’t seen her rock of a son this scared in forever and her throat tightens instantly, cutting off her oxygen supply. “W-what’s going on?”

“I d-don’t even know,” Thor stammers as he leads her into the downstairs bathroom, where Loki is sitting on the floor, arms looped around his knees, back against the wall, absentmindedly staring into space, a palm-sized bruise swelling under his left eye. Terror slams into her stomach and she drops down in front of her youngest, reaching for his hands. “Hey, honey, I’m here.”

No answer from Loki, no recognition.

Frigga holds his hands in both of hers, squeezing them gently. They’re like ice in her palms. “You tell me you ‘got this’?” she whispers through clenched teeth, not even looking at her eldest, her right hand traveling to Loki’s cheek, gently cupping it. “You accuse me of not trusting you with him after withholding something like _that_ from me?” Thor gulps and she can feel that there is so much more to their ‘road trip’ than he let on so far. “You tell me you’re ‘fine’ after getting into a car crash and deciding to just spend the night here even though your brother was hurt? What the hell has gotten into you, Thor? I didn’t raise you like this, did I?”

She glances up at him then and he looks beyond mortified. “You didn’t.”

“Was he really fine last night or did you lie to me about that too?”

“N-no, I—”

“Then why is he like this now?” Frigga asks and it costs her the last ounce of what’s left of her mental strength after the previous days not to shout because she doesn’t want to startle Loki when has withdrawn so deeply into himself again that he doesn’t even seem to realize they’re there.

Thor swallows so loudly that the noise seems to echo across the room.

“Tell me exactly what happened. _Now_.”

“I messed up,” Thor stammers on a gut-wrenching sob and Frigga feels something very heavy settle in the pit of her stomach. “I-I hit him …”

“ _You what_?” Frigga can’t identify what exactly it is that she feels. Disgust? Disappointment? Anger? Guilt? A little bit of everything? “How _could_ you?”

“It was an a-accident,” Thor stammers. “I didn’t mean to … I-I was just …”

Frigga pictured all sorts of things to herself as she drove out here, yes, but Thor hitting his brother after standing up to his father to prevent him from doing the very same thing was not among those things. She takes a deep breath, stifling the urge to spring to her feet and slap him across the face in return. “Tell. Me. What. Happened.”

“Loki lied to me and said he got his learner’s permit and … and …” Thor wipes his nose and Frigga forces herself to let him speak before reprimanding him any further because he’s just started to cry and if Thor cries … “I let him drive, which I know was wrong and stupid, but I just wanted to spend some time with him. And suddenly he went all crazy and he took the parkway ramp and it just … He almost got us killed, like, he turned into … I was sure we were gonna die because he just switched lanes without looking like some psychopath and then I had to grab the wheel to get us onto the breakout lane and then we hit the guardrail and I was so mad and I just yanked him out of the seat and I punched him because he wouldn’t talk to me … I-I punched him, Mom. Just like Dad. I hurt him like _that_ and I-I don’t know how … I can e-ever forgive myself.”

Frigga doesn’t know what terrifies her more. The fact that Loki has dissociated to the point of being unresponsive again or that his brain cooked up the idea of tricking Thor into something so outrageous or that Thor was naive enough to fall for it and reckless enough to agree or that she almost lost them both yesterday or that Thor hit his brother so violently that he bruised his face. But Thor seems so genuinely broken up about what happened that she has to try to soothe him despite the disgust churning in her stomach. She thinks about what Odin said a few weeks ago about feeling the urge to knock some sense back into Loki and realizes that, in a strange, very twisted, very sick way, they only hurt him because they so desperately want him to be okay. “I won’t say it’s alright but I’m certain you didn’t mean to hit him,” she tries, her throat still tight. “I know you want what’s best for him but what you did—”

“Of course I didn’t _mean_ to,” Thor protests in a broken whisper. “I know what I did and I feel horrible, Mom. Believe me, I feel …” His words trail off.

“Well, what’s done is done.” Frigga cups Loki’s cheek, stroking him, trying to make it all go away but he still doesn’t even seem to register her presence. She hooks her hands under his armpits, trying to pull him upwards, but he gives a low wince of pain and she abandons the attempt. “Honey, are you hurt?” She glances up at Thor. “Is he hurt? I mean, any more than …”

Thor’s teeth are pulling at his bottom lip. “I p-punched him,” he repeats, an expression of regret twisting his features.

Frigga swallows because, despite him being so obviously broken up about it, the idea of Thor going against Loki as he apparently did sickens her. “We need to get him checked out,” she mumbles, stroking over Loki’s head. “What happened after the accident?”

“He …” Thor gulps again. “It was weird like … You noticed his different voices, right?” he asks after a pause and, for a moment, there doesn’t seem to be any air left around her to provide her lungs with oxygen. “That sometimes he’s here talking to us but it doesn’t really seem to be _him_ talking to us?”

Frigga gives a reluctant nod because, no matter what Dr. van Dyne said, her brain still tries to block it out most of the time, refusing to interpret Loki’s different voices as anything other than signs of high emotional stress even though she knows deep inside her heart that they’re not.

“Have you ever heard him talk like a … like a child?”

She thinks back to how Loki snuggled up to her in the infirmary about two weeks ago and how he clung to her after they made it back home, unable to drink from the glass of water she was holding to his lips without spilling the liquid onto his shirt. “Yes.”

“He was like that,” says Thor. “And he didn’t want to go home because …” His face twists into a grimace of pain and he seems to be choking on the words. “Because …”

Frigga swallows. “What?”

“I d-don’t know,” Thor whispers.

Frigga can tell he’s withholding more information because he probably thinks he’s protecting Loki or the both of them, protecting them in the way that only siblings protect each other to keep something from their parents while staying blind to the fact that they’d be able to resolve a conflict that much faster if only they told their parents the truth. Yet, even though her son’s behavior outrages her, she knows she can’t really hold lying against him because she has lied to them as well and because she’s got to hand it to him that he owned up to hurting his brother when he could have just tried to make her believe that Loki got hurt in the car crash.

“But then we came here and he was okay,” Thor continues. “I swear to you, he was _okay_ , Mom. I made dinner and he ate a whole pizza. I wasn’t lying about that. He ate and I didn’t even know he was hurt like that because he didn’t _say_ anything and then he fell asleep and I … I went for a swim and then I called you after I came back and then I—” Thor interrupts himself, swallowing. “I got him a blanket, like you said and then I went to sleep and when I woke up, he was in here.”

“And?”

“He had a panic attack and he was hurting himself and I tried to calm him down and it seemed to work for a while but then he just …” His shoulders slump. “We talked a little and I told him that I met his therapist and, I don’t know, I probably upset him because I told him what happened and what she said about your divorce stressing him out and then he just … He just … He said he didn’t wanna live like this anymore and then he just …freaked out and now he’s like ... like _this_.” More tears well into his eyes and he tries to wipe them away but, eventually, he breaks down crying, burying his face in his hands right where’s standing. The sight truly drives home to her what an immense burden she placed upon his shoulders, first unwittingly and then semi-consciously because she just silently accepted that Loki clung to him as his own personal rock ever since he arrived at their home. Thor is towering above her, six feet three and full of muscles, but he is in sore need of comfort and she can feel the weight of his distress crushing him down.

She turns away from Loki and rises to her feet. “Come here,” she whispers and he melts into her arms instantly.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Frigga whispers as she pulls him into a hug. He collapses against her chest, burying his face in her neck, and she wraps her arms around his muscular stature, pressing him close even though she is still disgusted by how violently he bruised his brother.

“I should have m-made him better, I’m sorry,” Thor sobs, his words driving a knife into her heart. “I-I know that. I’m sorry that I failed you.”

“You didn’t! None of this is your fault.” Tears spring to her eyes and she cradles him as she did when he was a boy. “It’s _not_ your fault, do you hear me? Yes, you hurt him and that wasn’t okay and I’m disappointed and angry because of what you did but _I_ left him alone in the house. It’s ultimately my fault, not yours. I should never have put this burden on you the way I did. You were just a child yourself when all of it started and I am _so_ sorry. You didn’t fail me.” Her brain didn’t even know what her mouth was going to say when she started speaking but now that the words are out there, she realizes that she doesn’t _truly_ hold his outburst it against him. “You didn’t fail me,” she repeats even though, in a way, he did.

“Let’s just agree to blame Dad, okay?” Thor counters as he breaks the hug, resorting to his usual strategy of trying to leaven a tense situation with humor. “I inherited my fucking temper from him after all, didn’t I?”

He tries to smile but there’s a brief flash of skepticism in his eyes she can’t even begin to explain. “You did,” Frigga exhales on a trembling breath. “God, this family has a lot to work out.”

“That, mother, is an understatement,” says Thor and there’s an ominous, almost reproachful edge to his voice that is deeply disturbing.

“But before we do that, I need to get your brother to a doctor,” says Frigga, choosing not to dwell on the implications behind her son’s words for the moment. She sinks back onto her knees, reaching for Loki’s armpits once more. “Come on, honey. I need you to stand up, okay?”

Finally, Loki stirs.

“We need to get you to a doctor,” Frigga coos.

“No,” whispers Loki. “No doctor.”

“Yes, honey. You need to see a doctor,” Frigga insists before focusing her attention back on Thor. “Help me get him in the car so that I can take him to the hospital.” 

Thor gulps. “To the h-hospital?”

“Yes,” Frigga confirms with a glance at her son’s muscles. “We need to make sure you didn’t”—she swallows down the disgust and the anger and the disappointment flaring up inside of her again—“break anything.”

Thor gulps once again, a look of pure abjection twisting his features. “I’m c-coming with you, of course,” he stammers because he probably doesn’t want her to find out just how hard he went against his little brother when he isn’t there to hear it.

“No,” whispers Loki. “I’m not hurt.”

“Of course you are hurt,” Frigga objects. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have flinched. And you,” she tells Thor because, even if she doesn’t want to be, she is angry with him and doesn’t want him near her in case she’ll find out that he did break his brother’s bones. But, then again, another part of her just wants to protect Thor from having to face up to the gravity of his actions because her heart breaks for him and everything he had so sacrifice because of her maternal shortcomings. Because she knows he didn’t truly mean to hurt his brother and because one of the reasons they’re here now is because she kept their family dynamic fully functional for over a decade. And, on top of all that, she doesn’t want him to spoil his own future. “You are not going to skip football practice. You are going to help me get your brother into the car and then you’re going to get yourself home,” she decides. “We’re going to talk about this when you get back.”

Thor gulps a third time but then he nods his compliance and lifts his weakly protesting brother off the floor as gently as he possibly can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This family is just so delightfully, intricately screwed up, isn't it? It's painful but it's so rewarding to write because there are so many facets to this mess while, simultaneously, there's still love and isn't that infuriating? *deep sigh*
> 
> See you all soon, I hope x


	23. That's how I got hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor is having a pretty shitty day and Loki opens up a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You get to see Thor interact with people outside his family environment and then you get to meet someone who has been in the tags since the beginning but who none of you asked me about to this day. This should be fun. 
> 
> Enjoy x

“Mr. Odinson.”

For some reason, Thor knows that the voice speaking to him comes from somewhere outside this weird shadowy dream in which he’s just turned into a giant ass werewolf on an empty Highway that has a creepy post-apocalyptic feel to it because there’s no one else there. No one that can still speak anyway, there’s just dead bodies and debris and fire and smoke and only one other car that isn’t yet crushed and it’s his own and it’s grimy and dusty and his clothes are tearing—

“Mr. Odinson.”

—and he’s letting out an angry roar, jumping at the car, clawing at the lock, ramming his head against the Tesla’s back window, shattering the glass, startling Loki who has been sleeping curled up on the backseat and who starts crabwalking away from him, eyes widened in terror, panting and—

Thor’s startles awake when a book slams onto the table a few inches from his nose and he jerks his head upwards, staring into the pinched, tight-lipped expression of his law professor as his eyes fly open. Mrs. Willows glowers down at him, her arms folded across her charcoal suit. “Are we boring you, Mr. Odinson?”

“No, I, uh,” Thor begins, having to clear his throat to give his voice at least some strength. _Dammit it all to fucking hell_ , how could he fall asleep in class, for fuck’s sake? Embarrassment level three-thousand. He brushes his chin with his thumb and finger, carefully checking for drool. “I am just tired, Ma’am, which is a far more likely explanation for why people fall asleep than boredom.”

A few people encourage him with a soft chuckle.

“Not that I could ever get bored in your class, of course. Under normal circumstances, it’s far too captivating to even zone out,” Thor hurries to add with the smile that usually gives him a free pass in other classes and all other areas of life basically but, unfortunately for him, she isn’t in the mood. She never is. For some reason, she’s immune to his charm, which makes his life a lot harder sometimes and right now definitely is one of those times.

“If that is the case,” says Mrs. Willows, her eyebrows arching up, “I’m sure you’ll be able to recite the arguments we discussed before you so boldly decided to use your arms as a pillow on your desk.”

All eyes are on him, making Thor feel like he’s actually on the witness stand, and he’d be damned if he knew what they’d been talking about before his mind drifted off but, then again, he’s too fucking exhausted to even give a damn about some lame ass law class after everything that happened in the past twenty-four hours. What he cares about are the bruises he inflicted upon Loki and the look on his Mom’s face when she saw them and that freaking photo album his parents sealed away in a safe and what child Loki confided in him and Coach Tyree, who let him feel in every bone of his body how displeased he was with Thor for showing up thirty minutes late for practice after having had to drive back home to change into his football gear and from there back to campus. “Okay, maybe I wasn’t hyper-focused,” Thor concedes, trying for a contrite expression that turns out to be even less effective than his smile.

“I’ve been very patient with you, Mr. Odinson,” grumbles Mrs. Willows. “I know that you’ve never been particularly interested in this degree beyond the fact that it allows you to play for our university’s football team for as long as you’re enrolled as a student here.”

 _Great_. _Of course she has to give that speech in front of the assembled class instead of discreetly pulling him aside afterwards_. _Adults are so fucking power-hungry_ _and_ _it sucks balls_.

“I’ve been willing to let that slide because, alas, I haven’t become a professor to keep young people from pursuing their dreams.” Her eyes narrow at him and Thor notices for the first time just how insanely blue they are. “But I won’t tolerate you falling asleep on me after you missed the deadline to submit your first assignment of the semester and didn’t even think to contact me about it, and still decided to walk in here as if you own the place. In this room, you’re not a star, is that clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” says Thor but it comes out as a mocking. Maybe he intended that, maybe he didn’t, but damn that broad for making such a fuss just because he lost focus for like two seconds.

“Is that clear?” she repeats.

“Yes,” he presses out. Not because she really made a convincing point but because it’ll look bad on his record if he flunks her class.

Mrs. Willows gives a stern nod before she focuses her attention back on his classmate who’s still standing in the front, his tablet in his hand. He starts reading again, probably picking up where they left off, reminding Thor that he was supposed to write out a summation for the case they’ve studying this far and email it to his professor until last Sunday night and that this is what the others have been doing before he dozed off, reading their summations out loud, discussing them. Yet, preoccupied as he was with his own thoughts, he didn’t even ask himself what was going on because he didn’t care. Now he vaguely remembers how he planned to write his own summation last Saturday but that was when he left Mrs. Willows’s class last Thursday and didn’t yet know that his life was gonna take a whole ass hundred-eighty on him after Frigga asked him to stop by for dinner. And how the hell could anyone expect him to focus on any of his professor’s stupid ass crap when Loki has gotten so much worse—

“Mr. Odinson?”

“Yes?” asks Thor and his heart sinks because, _fuck everything_ , he lost focus _again_.

“We want to hear your opinion,” says Mrs. Willows, a smug grin playing upon her lips. She crosses her arms in front of her chest once more, challenging him. “Enlighten us, please.”

“He could work on his presentation skills,” Thor tries, turning to his classmate whose name has entirely slipped his mind. “No offense but you look kinda defensive. That isn’t a good look for a lawyer on the stand. You need to be more convincing.”

Mrs. Willows blows out an annoyed breath. “We’re here to discuss his _argument_.”

“What use is a good argument if he’s standing there like _this_?” Thor retorts, only dimly aware of what a tremendous asshole move he’s making to save his own skin. “Again, no offense, but it’s all about presentation when it comes to convincing the Jury, right?”

“I don’t know whether you act like this because you’re exceptionally dense or just insufferably arrogant and, frankly, I don’t care, because I’ve had enough of your uncooperative attitude for one day,” snaps Mrs. Willows, her arm jerking towards the door. “You’re excused for today and if you fail to hand in your assignment by eight a.m. tomorrow morning along with a good explanation for your behavior, don’t even bother coming back next week.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Thor mocks her again even though he’s kinda relieved that she kicked him out. Of course, it really fucking blows to be called out in front of eighteen other students like that, that’s out of the question, but at least he can get to the hospital faster now. Maybe Loki can help him with his assignment if he calmed down, Thor speculates as he strides out of the room, head held high, thinking of that one time Loki showed him how to convert fractions into percentages because his fifth grade math teacher sucked at explaining things.

* * *

Meanwhile, Loki’s eyelids are finally fluttering open in his hospital room and Frigga inches her chair closer to his bed. “Hey, honey,” she whispers, stroking over his hair. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been drugged,” Loki groans. He tries to prop himself up but gives up on the attempt with a low wince of pain before she has a chance to tell him to stay lying down.

“They gave you a sedative,” Frigga explains.

“Why?” He chuckles nervously. “No, wait, let me guess,” Loki adds when she draws a breath to speak. “I lost my shit and started screaming like a baby?”

She can tell by his tone how mortified he is and now she knows what exactly Thor revealed to him that was so upsetting because, yes, he did experience another episode of regression after they arrived in the ER earlier this morning. After dozing almost the whole drive, Loki seemed disoriented when they walked into the hospital. Voice shaky, he flat-out refused when the nurse told him to remove his shirt in the examination room after admission and then started screaming and flailing around when Frigga attempted to remove it for him, trying to make it clear that it was necessary that they get his bruises checked out. The doctor and the nurse exchanged a meaningful glance at this, possibly suspecting abuse, this horrible word again, but it _was_ abuse, wasn’t it, _yes_ , she had to tell herself, Thor used non-accidental physical force that resulted in bodily injury. Thor did abuse his brother. She told the nurse and the doctor the truth then and the man with the slightly disconcerting name Dr. Strange suggested it’d be better if she left because her presence didn’t “seem to help”. She objected to this at first but then rose to her feet when he asked her again, more urgently this time, but as soon as she turned around, Loki started crying, bawling rather, screaming, “Mama! Mama! Mama! Mamaaaaaaaa!” after her, begging her not to leave, throwing his arms around her neck as soon as she sat back down beside him.

“I did?” Loki sighs, studying her face. “Now that’s just marvelous, isn’t it? I’m getting worse every day.”

“That’s not true. You were just very upset,” Frigga tells him, stroking his cheek. She takes the plastic water cup from the nightstand and holds it to his lips, murmuring, “Here, drink this.”

“That’s why I’m here though, isn’t it?” Loki whispers softly when she puts the cup back down. “Thor called nine-one-one on me because I flipped out? What did he tell you? Look, I wasn’t trying to kill myself, I promise!”

“N-no, honey,” Frigga replies and her heart breaks at the realization that he’s missing so much of what’s been happening around him this past week. “That’s not why you’re here. I drove you here to get your injuries checked out.”

Loki’s lips form a silent ‘oh’ and he inspects the bandage they wrapped around his wrist after stitching up his self-inflicted wound before his right hand travels to his chest, feeling out the figure of eight clavicle splint under his hospital gown. He doesn’t even ask.

“Your left shoulder and collarbone are fractured,” Frigga informs him, her stomach still in knots because his own brother did this to him and because his skin is littered with so many wounds and bruises and scars that he and others inflicted upon his body that the nurse gasped in shock when Loki’s shirt finally came off. Because she is still expecting a CPS investigator to walk through the door any minute now. “That bandage is supposed to keep you immobilized, so that your bones can heal.”

He gives a vague nod but, again, he doesn’t ask for clarification.

“What happened yesterday, huh?” Frigga begins softly; not because she thinks Thor actually lied to her but because she wants to hear Loki’s perspective, at least his perspective on what little he remembers. “After I left the house?”

Loki flees her gaze. “Thor stopped by and I … I don’t know, I just … I told him I got my learner’s permit and asked him to teach me how to do drive. It was just a prank, really. A test. I never thought he’d say yes but he did; didn’t even want see proof. God, he’s so dumb.”

Frigga exhales a breath because whenever her sons spent time together in the past, they frequently seemed to impair each other’s intellectual capacity. Apparently, some things never change, no matter how far they seem to have grown apart. “Look, first of all, your brother isn’t nearly as dumb as you make him out to be all the time and second—”

“Gullible, then.”

“Second, are you really under the illusion that driving on the highway in a stick shift when you have no driving experience whatsoever is, in any way, _smart_? You could have—”

“Highway?” Loki echoes, his eyes going wide. “We didn’t take the highway, what are you talking about? I’m willing to admit that talking Thor into this wasn’t exactly the brightest idea because we could have easily ended up hurting someone, but I’m not stupid, mother. We just drove up and down the neighborhood, I swear.”

His eyes plead with her and, _all be damned_ , she knows he isn’t lying just as he wasn’t lying when he insisted Odin never laid a hand on him. Her stomach gives another lurch. “And then what?”

“After a while, Thor said we should get back home and I figured that’s what we did but, apparently that’s not what happened.” Another nervous chuckle.

“It’s not,” Frigga confirms, stroking over his head. “So you, uh, don’t remember anything that happened after Thor telling you that?” He shakes his head but the flicker in his eyes tells her that, this time, he isn’t telling her the whole truth. “Loki, do you remember the accident?”

“What acci—” Loki interrupts himself, a soft, almost grateful smile appearing on his lips that Frigga can’t begin to explain to herself because she doesn’t know what kind of conclusions her son’s mind is drawing from her words after Thor told him the bruises were his fault. “So, _that’s_ how I got hurt. We got into an accident?”

Loki’s smile turns into a quiet laugh of relief and she doesn’t have the heart to contradict him. “You did. So, you did black out again, hm?”

His face twists into a grimace of pain, embarrassment, guilt, fear.

“Loki?”

“Yes and no,” he whispers meekly.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Loki remains silent, avoiding her gaze, his teeth pulling at his lips, but she can sense how lost and vulnerable he is and how much he’s aching to confide in her. She just has to find the right words. “Look, honey, I want to help you. I really do. I want to understand but I can’t possibly help you if I don’t know what’s going on. Please, talk to me. Open up, honey. Let me in.”

“I went somewhere else,” Loki whispers after what feels like several minutes, his eyes flitting across the room, focusing on anything but her. “I remember what happened but not … I mean, I don’t remember what happened in the outside world because I went … I went inwards.”

Frigga tries to ignore how much his words terrify her because Thor was right, wasn’t he, she has to stop acting as if it’s the end of the world that Loki needs help. “You went inwards? What exactly does that mean?” she asks as softly as she can.

“Look, I know you think I’m crazy,” Loki begins and her heart breaks once again at the sight of how mortified he is because she gave him the impression that he couldn’t possibly be hearing those voices for real. “And I know this _is_ crazy but I have this … this … there’s … I can actually travel into my head, Mom. Like, there’s a whole world inside my brain and that’s where I went. I remember what I did there but I wasn’t … I mean, I was conscious but I wasn’t … I wasn’t _here_ , with Thor.”

Frigga’s cups her beautiful boy’s face in both of her hands, wishing she could extract his suffering through his skin with the touch of her palms. She can’t even imagine the nature of that suffering and how it reaches into every crevice of his brain and, for a brief moment, she wonders if she’d even be able to endure it if she took it upon herself. “You’re not crazy, Loki,” she begins. “Look, I know I reacted poorly when I first learned about the voices and I am sorry about that. I was shocked and I didn’t know any better and I’m not going to lie to you and say that it’s easy for me to wrap my head around what exactly it is that you’re going through. But what I do know is that you’re not crazy. You have been through a lot and that’s how your brain copes with what you’ve been through to protect you,” Frigga tells him, wondering instantly why his brain would react so strongly to Thor telling him they needed to drive back home. “The voices, that world inside your head? They’re coping mechanisms,” she repeats Dr. van Dyne’s words. “Very intricate coping mechanisms, sure, but they don’t make you crazy.”

Loki stifles a sob. “Can you sit down?” he whispers after a while, glancing at the bed.

“Of course, honey.” As soon as Frigga’s bottom touches the mattress, he snuggles up to her, burrowing his face into her side. She pulls him into her arms, careful not to put any pressure on his left shoulder. “I’m so sorry that I need them.”

A lump forms in her throat. “What do you mean?”

“Coping mechanisms like those,” whispers Loki. “I wish I could just be stronger and normal and more resilient, more like Thor.”

“Honey, please don’t say that,” Frigga murmurs, cradling him closer. “You have no reason to apologize for who you are. You don’t have to be like Thor. I already have one Thor. What would I need a second one for?” She smiles softly, stroking over his hair. “Apart from that, you’re pretty damn resilient in your own way and I don’t think you’re even aware of that. You live with all that pain and trauma inside of you, day in, day out, fighting, struggling just to make it through the day, and there’s a whole lot of other people out there who wouldn’t be able to take that. You’re so much stronger than you think, honey.”

“I’m just … I’m so exhausted, Mom,” Loki murmurs and when she glances down at him, she notices that his eyelids are closed. “I want it all to just … go away.”

“I know, I know,” Frigga whispers, her fingers playing with his hair. “I mean, I can’t even begin to imagine how you really feel but I can see how exhausted you are.”

“I just wanna sleep,” Loki whimpers. “For, like, ever.”

“You can sleep. You can sleep for as long as you want to,” Frigga coos. “I’m not going anywhere, honey, I promise.”

A quiet sob slips past her son’s lips and he whispers his thanks and he apologizes again and she shushes him and when he falls asleep, seeking comfort in her arms, it finally dawns on Frigga that this is the only way she can help Loki. That it isn’t in her power and not a requirement for being a good mother to take his pain away from him, never was, never will be, and that she can’t heal his broken heart any more than she could heal the hearts of her parents. All she can do is try to help Loki mend the parts, to hold him when his body aches to be held, to shed the feelings of guilt and self-pity to rebuild her strength and not to dwell in the past beyond learning from past mistakes to avoid repeating them in the future.

Little does Frigga Fjörgyndottir know, however, that he past has already begun to catch up with her family a few floors below her feet.

* * *

“Hey, wait,” yells a woman’s voice as Thor strides across the hospital parking lot, still furious with his professor for ridiculing him and insulting his intellect in front of the whole class, his anger boiling inside of him, scorching the walls of his stomach, his lungs, his heart. “Are you Thor? Thor Odinson?”

 _Odinson_.

Thor is seriously beginning to despise that name because it no longer feels like just a name, no, it feels like a legacy, a tainted legacy of arrogance and random violent outbursts of inexplicable rage, and how dare a stranger take it into her filthy mouth? He turns around and sizes up the woman belonging to the voice, his eyes traveling over the cigarette in her right hand, the skull ring she’s wearing on her right middle finger, her thick, waist-long black hair that seems to have a rather strange texture, her black skintight jeans, her studded leather boots, the mint-colored oversized blouse over the black tank top, her sinister smile, her pale skin—extremely pale skin—and her thick smoky eyes. “How do you know my name?”

She looks amused in a condescending kind of way. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s a long shot, really, but maybe it’s because you’re wearing a rather eye-catching sports jacket that has your name _on_ it?”

Thor blows out an annoyed breath but before he can say anything, the woman chuckles and blows out a puff of smoke almost directly into his face. “Oh boy, you didn’t grow up to be the brightest crayon in the box, did you?”

“Who the hell _are_ you?” Thor snaps, stifling the urge to shove her away.

“I see they never talked about me.” She pouts and grabs her chest in mock consternation and that pout looks somewhat familiar and the part of Thor that has watched Star Wars one too many times immediately perks up. _I have a bad feeling about this_. “Well, after what I’ve done to them, I guess they wouldn’t.” The smirk that appears on her lips gives her a creepy villain-in-a-life-action-comic-adaption kind of look.

Thor narrows his eyes at her even though his stomach has already started to curl in on itself. “I’m not going to ask you again. Who the hell are you and what the fuck do you want?”

“I guess I just wanted to see if it’s really you. To see with my own eyes who the kid whose fault it is that my life turned to absolute shit grew up to be.”

Thor draws a deep breath because if he doesn’t calm himself, she’ll be the next person to catch a shiner.

“It’s me.” The woman pauses for effect. “Hela.”

“Hela,” Thor echoes, mentally chewing on the name and coming up with nothing. “Is that supposed to mean anything to me?”

“Actually yes but, then again, the last time I saw you, you were still in diapers, so maybe you forgot all about me.” She shrugs and flicks the rest of her cigarette onto the ground, stubbing it out with her right boot.

“Look,” says Thor because his brain has definitely reached its limit when it comes to processing outrageous stuff. “You’re clearly mistaking me for someone else. I certainly didn’t ruin your life, I’ve never even seen your face before and, truth be told, I’m having a pretty shitty week, probably the shittiest week of my life, so just do yourself a favor and back off, okay?” He turns around and stomps towards the hospital entrance.

“Just tell me one thing,” Hela shouts after him. “Are you here to visit your old man? Please tell me that the old prick finally had a heart attack or something.”

He instantly turns back around. “How dare you speak about my father that way?” Thor blares as he lunges towards her because that’s another thing his Dad drilled into him. _You shall not discredit any member of the family in public_. And even if Odin turned into this fuckfaced dick, Thor will be damned if he lets some nasty goth chick appearing out of thin air badmouth him. “You don’t even know who I am. Because if you did, you wouldn’t try to get on my bad side.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’ve seen all the bad sides,” replies Hela. “I’ve seen the worse sides too, actually, and if you think you can intimidate me, think again. Apart from that, I’ve seen enough to know that you turned out to be exactly like him, which is a tragedy really because you were really cute when you were, like, two.”

Thor’s fists clench at his side because she’s right about that, isn’t she, and how the fuck does she even know that and how the fuck does she dare to rub something like this into his face?

“Alright, out with it. How do you know my family?” Thor relents eventually even if he doesn’t _want_ to know. He just wants to go in there and make sure Loki is okay. No, you know what? Scratch that. What he really wants is to set the clock back a week because if he had known exactly what he was going to bring upon himself he’d never have opened Jane’s text and he’d never have called his Mom and he’d never have driven back to have dinner with his family. And if he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have failed Coach Tyree this morning and he wouldn’t have dozed off in class after practice and he’d still have a life that doesn’t revolve around his brother’s declining mental health and he’d still be pumped to beat Wyoming’s ass in two days. He wouldn’t feel like so shitty because he disappointed and angered both his Mom and his coach.

He’d still be a star on campus.

He wouldn’t have to deal with that bitch standing in front of him with that creepy ass smirk plastered onto her face right now.

“Your Dad was married to my pathetic doormat of a Mom before he started cheating on her with yours,” Hela replies, followed by another nasty chuckle. “Banging his secretary. Damn, that’s such a rich white guy move, isn’t it?”

And just like that, Thor’s world crashes to a stop for the zillionth time in a few days because, _holy fuck_ , here’s _YET ANOTHER_ thing no one ever deigned to mention with even one syllable in the past. And, even if the fact that Frigga is actually his Dad’s second wife doesn’t seem particularly scandalous compared to everything else he recently found out, there’s some dot-connecting business taking place in Thor’s subconscious that suddenly makes him feel as if he’s actually sitting in a space ship milliseconds before a hyperspace jump in the middle of a Star Wars movie.

Hela shakes her head, half in amusement, half in shocked surprise. “Whoa, they really didn’t you tell you shit, did they?” Another chuckle slipping past her lips. “I can’t say I’m surprised, though. Anyway, I’ve got places to be, so.” She shrugs. “It was weird meeting you.”

“Wait,” Thor calls out when this strange woman turns the table on him and just starts walking away because, _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ , despite the nasty vibes she’s giving off, she doesn’t seem to be the type of person to mince her words and he could really use some unsanitized honesty right now. “Why don’t we, uh, go for lunch or something?”

Hela turns back around, her eyebrows hiking up, glaring at him as if he insulted her. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“ _You_ chatted _me_ up, remember?” Thor offers her a shrug. “I’m buying. What do you say?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise :)
> 
> I really wanted to have this sort of mirror situation with Thor and Loki falling asleep in their respective school environments. I hope you enjoyed that because I've wanted to include this for a long time but I never really knew where to put it; I hope it works here.
> 
> And yes, Thor seriously needs to work on his attitude concerning women. 
> 
> And yes, of course, there's more drama ahead because what else could I possibly write? 
> 
> See y'all in a bit x


	24. You don’t blame it on others when you mess up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor confronts both of his parents with their past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tw mention of childhood abuse]
> 
> I lowkey hate this chapter for reasons I can't pinpoint. I've been staring at it for the past four days, trying to determine what I don't like, but it's no use, so I'm just gonna post it and wait for the reviews and maybe edit it later because the show must go on, right?

“So, apparently it’s a felony when I ignore your texts but _you_ ghosting _me_ for an entire morning and letting me come here hit or miss is perfectly acceptable?” Thor is walking into the hospital room not fifteen minutes after Loki fell back asleep, a sour expression on his face, an angry aura swirling around him that causes Frigga’s stomach to clench instantly. “I was kinda tied up here,” she replies.

Thor glances at Loki’s sleeping frame in her arms. “Yeah, I can see that.”

Frigga clears her throat because, suddenly, there’s this wall between them that wasn’t there this morning and that is making her feel as if she’s talking to a complete stranger instead of the son she raised. Thor’s expression is hard as stone, his entire body seemingly vibrating. “Did you make it back in time? How did practice go?”

“I’ve had more glorious days.”

“I hate that for you,” says Frigga, determined to finally jump off the self-pitying, shouldering-all-the-blame train.

“Yeah, I hate that for me too,” Thor mumbles, his eyes glued to his brother. Loki is sleeping between like a tiny little fragile version of the elephant in the room that neither of them dares to mention for a very long moment. “How is he?” Thor asks eventually. “Did I … I hurt him, didn’t I? I mean, like, I hurt him badly?”

“You did,” Frigga informs him in a low voice. “You fractured his left collarbone and his shoulder. He’ll have to wear a sling for at least six weeks.”

Thor’s eyes widen and he stares at Loki; aghast, disgusted, embarrassed, furious. Most of all, furious. “I-I … I d-didn’t think …” Thor walks over to the chair she’s been sitting in until Loki woke, flops himself down, props his elbows up on his knees and buries his head in his hands, his fingers raking through his hair. “Fuck, Mom. I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry. I swear to you I didn’t mean to—”

“I know,” says Frigga, forcing the words out of her mouth. “And I didn’t tell him. He doesn’t remember that you hit him and I let him believe that he got hurt in the accident because that’s what he figured happened.”

Silence creeps over them, engulfing the room.

“He doesn’t remember because it wasn’t Loki who I hit,” Thor mumbles after a while and the tone of his voice suggests his mind has been working on this all morning.

Frigga draws a breath, forcing herself to stop beating around the bush because Loki cannot possibly get any better if her brain continues to be afraid of what the existence of those voices truly means. “He told me he ventured inwards, into his own mind, so to speak, and that he doesn’t remember anything that happened in the ‘outside world’ after that.”

“Yeah. Someone else took over for him and tried to get us fucking killed,” Thor grumbles, frowning at his brother’s body, his temple veins thrusting through his skin. “That person _provoked_ me into hurting him.”

An icy shiver creeps down Frigga’s spine. “Maybe but that doesn’t mean Loki isn’t in pain right now. Pain that you caused him.”

“I’m not trying to make excuses, okay?” Thor shouts, startling his brother, who quietly mewls in his sleep. Frigga strokes over Loki’s head, trying to soothe him. “I’m just trying to explain. Don’t doubt that I’m aware of what I did, mother. If there’s one lesson I learned out there on the field, it’s that you don’t blame it on others when you mess up. You own up to it.”

“That’s a good lesson,” Frigga says softly. _Yes, that is a very good lesson indeed_. She locks his gaze in hers and gazing into her son’s blue eyes feels like glimpsing into a bottomless well of anger, frustration, bewilderment. “What’s wrong, Thor? I can tell there’s something that’s bothering you besides what you did to your brother. What is it?”

He remains silent.

“Come on, you’re bursting at the seams. Talk to me.”

“Let’s go outside.”

“I promised your brother that I’d stay.”

“Fine.” Thor rises to his feet, drawing himself to his full height, his nostrils flaring. “If you don’t want to talk—”

“Thor, please.”

“No, mother. You don’t want Loki to hear what I have to say, trust me,” Thor mutters and a stick of dynamite materializes in the bottom of Frigga’s stomach at his ominous tone. _The same tone as in the cabin bathroom in the early hours of the morning_. He stomps outside and she untangles herself because, even if he lost control like that, Thor still deserves her attention as much as Loki does. She follows him outside, praying that Loki won’t wake up before she returns to the bed.

Thor is waiting for her in the hallway and he is holding out his phone to her, his anger wafting off of him like puffs of smoke swirling out of a chimney. She swallows, forcing herself to look at the screen, and when she realizes what she’s looking at, the dynamite in her stomach explodes. He’s showing her a photo of the photo Odin snapped of Thor and her in their Halloween costumes the day before she came home from work and found Loki on her doorstep, suffering alone in the chilly evening breeze. “Care to elaborate,” Thor asks, parroting her words from when she confronted him about his questionable idea of protection, “why exactly you didn’t look particularly pregnant one day before you supposedly gave birth to my brother?”

Frigga gulps. Preoccupied as she was with everything else going on, she didn’t even think of the photo album for one second when Thor told her they were staying at the cabin. Not even after Odin lost his temper because, for some reason, he seemed to have forgotten she moved the evidence a while ago when Loki began to show an increasing interest in his father’s locked-up office. And even if she had remembered it was there, it would never have occurred to her that Thor would snoop around their things.

“It’s funny, really,” Thor continues in a strange tone of voice she never heard and can’t quite decipher, “because the only reason I went up there in the first place was to get him one of those damn fleece blankets because _you_ asked me to keep him warm.” He is standing there in the hallway, glowering, waiting for her to say something. _To own up it_. To give voice to the secret that has been hanging over their heads for sixteen years. “Gosh, just tell me the truth, Mom.”

“You obviously already know the truth.”

“I want to hear it from you,” Thor demands, exuding the same authority as his father. “I want to hear you _say_ it.”

“Your brother is adopted,” Frigga whispers and every time she gives voice to it or even thinks it, it leaves a sour taste on her tongue because she didn’t adopt him like other people adopt children. She rescued him, gave him life. Just as she gave Thor life. And then, a part of her subconscious realizes that the only way Thor could have come by the code for the safe is because Loki told him the code to the office at home. Her entire body turns to ice. “Did he see the album?” she asks, lips trembling, mouth dry. “Does he … know?”

“Not yet.” Thor snaps, glaring at her for a few beats before he explodes despite his greatest efforts to stay calm. “You know that’s it beyond fucked-up that you never had the guts to tell him the truth, right? Is that why you did such a lousy job trying to get him into therapy for the longest time? Because you didn’t want the secret to come out that way?”

Frigga stares at him, mouth agape. “How can you say such a horrible thing?”

“Because it’s true?” Thor snaps. “You told me that you only recently learned he suffered from childhood trauma. You lied!”

“Please, lower your voice,” Frigga hisses with frantic glances around the waiting area nearby, where eight other people are seated, eight people trying very hard not to stare at them, which proves quite impossible considering her son’s foghorn of a voice. “This is no one’s business but ours!”

“The fuck I will! I can’t believe you actually had the nerve of blaming me moving out for any of Loki’s problems,” Thor spits. “You knew from the beginning and still you made everything worse. Adopted children _always_ have abandonment issues and crap like that and still you shoved him off to preschool and our nanny as soon as possible just so you could go back to work!”

“That’s not true,” Frigga objects, aware that her voice sounds as weak as her argument.

“Of course it’s true!” Thor screams.

“He began to read when he was two,” Frigga replies softly, a sob tearing loose from her chest. “I sent him to this preschool for gifted kids because I thought they could satisfy his intellectual needs.”

Thor crosses his arms in front of his chest, his voice roaring like thunder. “And him screaming his ass off every fucking morning when you dropped him off didn’t tip you off that this might not have been the smartest move?”

“Stop shouting,” Frigga whispers. “You know that I took him to a therapist. I told that man about Loki’s problems—”

“Do you even know what happened in your absence?”

“—and I also told him that he was adopted but after spending time with Loki, he assured me that there was nothing wrong with him. I had no reason to doubt his professional assessment and what do you even mean with ‘what happened in my absence’? Why are you so angry with me?”

“You had every fucking reason to doubt this charlatan’s professional assessment! Loki screamed his head off every time you walked out the door. He was always sick. He missed whole weeks of school. Hell, he could probably be done with college by now if he hadn’t spent all this time in bed! He kept coming into my room when he had nightmares until he was, like, twelve! You can’t tell me that you really thought he’d just be okay one day. I mean, fuck, that’s what I thought but I’m a dumbass kid and you’re his Mom and that’s not even why the fuck I’m angry. Shit. You _really_ have to ask me _why_ I am angry with you? You raised us to always tell the truth and take responsibility for our actions and all that crap but you lied to Loki every single day and you can’t even own up to it. You’re a liar and a fucking hypocrite!” Thor blares, sounding exactly like his father. “ _That_ ’ _s_ why I am angry!”

“Thor, please, I—”

“And let me tell you, all the shit you pulled with me to make me spend time with him hurts even more now, knowing that he isn’t even yours.” Tears spring to Thor’s eyes and he angrily wipes them away, as if he surprised himself with this own words. “That even though you gave birth to _me_ , he’s always been more important to you than I am!”

Her son’s words feel like a knife to Frigga’s chest because, even if they aren’t true, she always had to give Loki that much more of her attention and to Thor, that must have looked like Loki was more important to her. She feverishly searches for a way to tell him how much she loves him but her mind remains blank because a declaration of love is nothing but words that could never remedy the impression she gave him with her actions. She stretches out her hand to comfort him.

“I mean not that it makes a difference,” Thor snaps, slapping away the hand she’s offering him. “He’s my brother and he’ll always be my brother but I’ll never forgive you for lying to me about—”

“Hey,” interrupts a voice and Frigga swings around, staring into the grim face of Dr. Strange. Thor inhales a long breath, trying to rein himself in as Dr. Strange sizes him up. “You must be the brother, I presume?”

“Yeah,” says Thor, the veins in his temples still throbbing. “Why are you saying it like that?”

“Because the reputation of your temper preceded you,” the doctor informs him. “Let me make two things very clear here, Mr. Odinson. First, you don’t get to come in here and shout the whole hospital down, okay? Second, I put an alert on Loki’s file. If he ever shows up here with injuries like that again, I will report his case to the authorities.”

“It won’t happen again,” Thor replies through clenched teeth.

“You better hope it won’t,” Dr. Strange warns him, his firm voice carrying an unmistakable threat. “Now, I’d like you to take your temper and leave this building. This is a place where people are supposed to rest and heal.”

Thor’s jaw has dropped, his anger momentarily replaced by incredulousness. “Are you serious?”

Frigga swallows.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” asks Dr. Strange. “Your brother needs to rest and if you truly want what’s best for him, you leave now. People can’t heal around the same people who hurt them.”

That gives Thor pause. Eventually he nods and then he flicks Frigga a glance. “Call me when you’re ready to tell me the whole truth and not just some fucking breadcrumbs, okay?” He turns on his heel and stomps away.

* * *

When she steps out of the hospital, Hela Davis feels a tiny pang of regret that she’s blown it with Thor. After what she just found out, having lunch with the person who could have become her baby brother if Odin hadn’t been such a monumental dick suddenly doesn’t seem so outrageous anymore. It would stir up a lot of shit, that’s for sure, especially since Thor hit the jackpot twice, inheriting both his Dad’s arrogance and his temper, but it’d be a sacrifice she’d be willing to make now that she heard the doctor. Damn, if she’d had lunch with him and buttered him up a little instead of acting like a bitter old bitch, he might have been willing to put in a good word for her with Frigga.

Frigga.

 _Dammit_.

That woman is something else and, even after seventeen years, Hela isn’t sure whether or not she actually hates her. But that is beside the point. Sentiment has never helped anyone, especially not her. The point is that they still have that firm. That they’re still filthily rich. That they still know influential people who could grant her access to sealed records and if she’d known that she would need that, she wouldn’t have spoilt things with Odin’s boy.

But then again, when did she ever not spoil things with all sorts of people for herself? Despite burning all her bridges in the past, she still survived just fine, though, and she’ll survive this too.

She briefly scans the parking lot, which is a ridiculous thing to do considering that she doesn’t even know if Thor’s still here or what car he drives.

What she does know is where they live, though, and that’s where she drives, parking her car opposite their huge ass house, waiting for someone to show up.

* * *

When Thor steps out of the hospital a few minutes after Hela pulled out of the parking lot, he feels utterly lost. Loki’s doctor’s words are lodged in his throat like a huge inflamed lump he can’t possibly hope to swallow around and it hurts to admit that the man was right. It hurts to admit that he fucked up in so many ways, failing his brother, his mother, his professor, his coach. _Gosh_. His Mom turned into a literal pillar of salt when he showed her the photo of her very unpregnant thirty-six-year-old self, her complexion a clammy grayish-white, and he curses himself for not having waited for a more opportune moment to confront her. For bluntly rubbing her face into how she failed to fulfil her motherly duties instead of waiting to calmly address the subject. It’s only a small comfort but at least he stopped himself from mentioning Hela because, for some reason, he knew that this particular blast from the past would have been the final straw for Frigga.

Thor climbs into his Tesla and starts driving with no idea where to turn to. Even though he knows tons of people, these are all horrifyingly superficial relationships and there’s no way in hell he could confide in any of them because his whole life went down the drain in less than seven days and none of them would understand just how messed up his family is. And he isn’t even legally an adult yet, dammit. He’d be able to live his life like all the other college kids if his family wasn’t such a giant fustercluck. A week ago, he was basically still a teenager, blissfully oblivious to all the shit tons of crap his parents have kept from them; happily, eagerly waiting for his future to arrive. And now he feels cripplingly hopeless, doubting that there’ll ever be a future for him because how could he possibly be selfish enough to move to San Francisco to play for the 49ers—if that possibility is even still on the table after his lousy performance this morning—when Loki needs him so much?

But that isn’t even the worst. The worst is that, with all of Loki’s issues, there finally seems to be no room for him in the family anymore. He never questioned his place in the past because, even when Loki kept their Mom on her toes with his tantrums and his sicknesses and his nightmares, she always made sure Thor knew he mattered just as much. But right now, she doesn’t seem to have any energy left for that and that’s what really hurts. What hurts even more than the doctor’s words. It hurts like nothing Thor ever experienced before. He feels hollow, almost as if someone reached into him and ripped out a significant part that kept his body functioning, preventing it from feeling as if he’d implode any minute.

Before he realizes where he’s been driving, he’s already approaching the courthouse, instinctively turning towards the man who raised him in the belief that hitting people in the face was a legit thing to do.

 _Dammit_.

As if there’s a chance in hell that his Dad will be any more interested in his feelings when all he’ll want to do is just grab a quick bite for lunch before he throws himself back into his work. Thor parks his car anyway because he has nothing to lose and at least Odin tried to see his perspective when they had dinner the other day. It’s worth a try.

If he doesn’t try, he’ll probably end up bashing someone’s head in.

Thor switches off the engine, gets out of the car and leans against a pillar at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the building, waiting a few feet away from the press who is of course camping there at a time like this. They spy him immediately and are about to encircle him but it’s around one p.m. and, suddenly, tons of people begin to pour out of the courthouse and instead of pouncing on an innocent college student in a football jacket, the reporters start clamoring for each and every one of the suited-up greaseballs walking through the door, shoving their microphones and their cameras into their faces.

His Dad isn’t among them though.

Thor watches the circus play out in front of him for a while, once more taken aback by how many millions of dollars are involved in protecting rich criminals from facing justice, repulsed by the fact that this entire hypocritical shit show actually passes for a fair trial in this country.

When he is just about to give up, Odin finally walks through the doors of the courthouse after about thirty minutes and strides down the stairs, his head held high, pushing away the cluster of reporters greedily closing in on the defense’s lead attorney at once, screaming the usual battery of questions at him. Watching his father put them in their place does something to Thor he doesn’t particularly like and he curses himself for still admiring that old bastard despite all the shit he pulled.

“Hey, Dad,” Thor greets him when he reached the bottom of the stairs, the reporters behind them.

“Thor,” mumbles Odin, scrunching up his nose because, well, having a family is a major inconvenience during a high-profile criminal trial. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you,” says Thor.

“Whatever it is, it has to wait,” says his Dad. “I don’t have much time.”

Thor swallows and bites his lip because suddenly he feels very foolish for coming here. _Sigh_. Time to bring in the big guns then. He flicks a glance the reporters, figuring they’re still pretty much in earshot. He clears his throat, raises his voice. “I just so happened to run into the daughter from your first marriage. Hela, isn’t it?”

Odin’s face falls.

“Dammit, Dad, she’s holding a grudge the size of a blue whale against you,” Thor continues. “She accused me of ruining her life and told me straight to my face that she’d rather eat dirt than to have a meal with Odin’s offspring and I really don’t know if I wanna find out what that is about.”

Odin grabs him by the shoulders, forcefully ushering him away from the press. “Y-you talked to Hela? _When_? _Where_?”

“At the hospital.”

“The hospital? Why were you at the hospital?” There is a flash of panic in Odin’s eyes that tells Thor he still cares about him even if he acts like doesn’t about ninety percent of the time and that refills the hole inside of him at least a little. “Are you okay?”

Finally, he does have his father’s attention. _Good_. “Not really, no.”

“What happened?”

“I beat Loki up,” Thor continues and his father’s face falls even more. “I went all you on him, fracturing his collarbone because he riled me up and I feel fucking horrible.”

Odin’s face is confusion incarnate. “What the …”

“We got into a fight. Mom’s pretty broken up about it,” Thor goes on and then he just decides to drop another bomb the same way he had to endure several things blowing up into his face in rapid succession in less than twenty-four hours. “She’s even more broken up about me finding out that Loki is adopted, though.”

Odin regains his composure far more quickly than Frigga ever could. He jerks his head towards a bench in the vicinity, motioning him to sit down. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“There’s so much shit that happened and I just … I can’t focus on school, I can’t focus on football. I just want to know the truth, Dad,” pleads Thor, suddenly feeling very small. “Is that really too much to ask?”

“I suppose not,” Odin relents. “As I said, I don’t have much time, so this has to be a very condensed version.” He draws a breath to steal himself and then he dives right in. “I married this woman in the early nineties. She had a daughter, five years old when I met her. Hela was a sweet girl back then but she also had issues. We never truly got along. The relationship went awry after a few years and then your mother started working for me and we fell in love. I divorced the other woman and married your mother. We had you. One day, you were about two and a half at the time, Hela showed up on our doorstep. She was fourteen then and in bad shape. Apparently, her mother’s new boyfriend was beating the hell out of both of them, just as Hela’s birthfather did before we met. Your mother took her in of course, said she could stay with us for a while, but, by then, the damage was already done. Hela was … She was messed up. She stole things from the house to sell them to finance her drug addiction, among them your grandfather’s ring, and when I confronted her, she went totally ballistic, started screaming, punching me. Which is why I kicked her out. Your mother pleaded with me to give her another chance, she seriously wanted to adopt her, can you imagine that?” He chuckles grimly.

“I can,” says Thor because Frigga is Mother fucking Teresa reborn or tries to be, anyways.

“You were a perfectly strong, perfectly healthy child before Hela showed up but her presence made you nervous. You started crying again at night and, overall, your development just seemed to stop, so I told Frigga that I wasn’t going to sacrifice the health of my own flesh and blood for this terror brat. With all due respect to your mother’s big heart, she has some serious issues. Your grandmother had three stillbirths after Frigga was born and that did something to her in here.” He taps his temple for emphasis. “Anyways, a few months later, Hela was arrested for assaulting an officer. She was sent to juvie for a few months and, and another year later, she dropped a dying baby on our doorstep, leaving us nothing but a note.”

His father continues to speak but Thor’s mind freezes because _WHAT THE FREAKING HELL_ … what the … He didn’t think … Even with everything that happened … How is that even … So Loki is … “W-wait, Dad,” Thor gasps. “You’re not saying …”

Odin’s eyebrows hike up. “What?”

“Loki isn’t …”

“He’s hers, yes.” Odin flicks a nervous glance in the direction of the courthouse. “I thought you already knew that when you basically mentioned her and Loki’s adoption in the same breath a few moments ago.”

“Wh-what happened?” Thor stammers, Hela’s whole dramatic goth bitch entrance coming alive in his mind again and, _holy freaking hell_ , there’s definitely a resemblance but his brain is still trying to assure him that this is nothing but a giant fucking misunderstanding because, even if he thought about Loki’s birthmother possibly being a sadist, what his Dad just said about her leaving him on their fucking doorstep as if their life has been some sick ass psycho thriller all along … No, this can’t be true … His life can’t be THAT messed up … Loki can’t have been through a near-death-experience as a newborn … He can’t be THAT traumatized … He can’t be …

“This time around,” Odin is saying, his voice finally penetrating the walls of Thor’s consciousness again, making him aware that he missed a chunk of the story, “Frigga did manage to talk me into adoption even though I opposed her again because I knew what it was going to do to you but she can be very, uh, convincing sometimes. But just look where we are now.” He snorts. “Just as I feared, you were the one who had to pay the highest price and she still doesn’t see that, does she? She never forgave herself that she couldn’t save Hela and now she’s trying to save Loki but, let me tell you, son, that bloodline is cursed. There’s no saving them. They’re damaged.” His hand wanders to Thor’s shoulder, squeezing it. “You aren’t and you’d better get the hell back to your life before this whole thing does something to your head too. This isn’t your mess to clean up. Frigga chose to keep Hela’s baby, let her deal with them both. Don’t make it your business.”

Thor gulps again, torn between being grateful for his father’s empathy and his honesty and being absolutely repelled by his lack thereof concerning Loki. “Don’t make it my _business_? He’s my little brother, Dad,” Thor whispers, thinking of Loki curled up against their mother’s side in his hospital bed. Thinking of what kid Loki told him. Of how Loki broke down this morning, clinging to him as if his life depended on it. “He’s … I can’t just …”

“I know,” sighs Odin. “I know you love him, as do I, but your mother … She isn’t acting rationally when it comes to Loki and there’s nothing either of us can do about it. The best you can do is to go back to your own apartment, to your own life, to your own career. Let them drive each other crazy.” He rises to his feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a case to win.”

Thor is about to protest but Odin silences him with a wave of his hand. “And _you,_ my boy, have a game to win. Good luck in Wyoming on Saturday, son.” He squeezes his shoulder again. “We’ll talk about this when you get back, okay? And please promise me that you won’t let any of this get to you. You’re an adult now. Go live your adult life. Start looking after yourself. Make me proud.”

Thor nods weakly and, as Odin walks away, he realizes that, despite acting like this gruff, emotionally unavailable ice block all the time, he still knows exactly who Thor is playing this weekend and where, apparently keeping tabs on him even though he gives off the impression that he couldn’t care less about the family. Plus, he told him at least a short version of the truth when all Frigga ever did was stammer and make excuses.

Thor remains sitting on the bench for what feels like an eternity, his mind bursting with thoughts even though he can’t grasp a single one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, now that you've read it, of course, there are very obvious things to dislike, such as Odin's entire attitude or Thor's attitude concerning Frigga's responsibilites but that's not what I meant. It just feels off. And I also don't mean Odin relenting too quickly. I actually thought about this for a long time and even if he didn't want the secret to come out earlier, now that the secret is out already, he's got nothing left to lose; particularly not since Frigga basically told him they were taking a break. His major objective would have been to win Thor over to his side *insert skull and crossbones emoji*
> 
> Anyway, I'm curious what you think. 
> 
> And yes, Loki is a mama's boy and Thor is a papa's boy. WBK.
> 
> Oh, and I'm still not sure if I'll keep Davis as a surname for Hela. I like it and since this is a real-life AU, she doesn't have to have a Norse-sounding name like the rest of them because they aren't blood-related but if I think of something better, I might change it.
> 
> Until next time x


	25. Babysitting mission aborted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela continues her stakeout and eventually makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tw mention of substance abuse]

**_Friday, September 27 th, 2019  
  
_ **

**_56 hours to the incident_ **

  
Even if she feels exceptionally foolish for doing so, Hela returns to the house around eleven in the morning after taking a shower in the tiny bathroom in the cheap motel off the Strip she checked into the previous night when she gave up, her intestines seething with frustration. Thor returned in the late afternoon, riding up in his ridiculously expensive sports car and parking it by the curb. She slid down in the driver’s seat of her battered Celica that has basically started falling apart under her ass with all the medical bills she has to pay, her eyes never leaving Thor’s muscular frame. Her thoughts unwillingly darted back to the time she spent in that house when he was toddler and didn’t quite know what to do with him because no one had ever taught her how to entertain a child with barely enough brainpower to focus on anything for more than five minutes at a time. Gosh, how adorable he was back then, Hela thought. It was a tragedy, really, that this sweet little toddler with his cute smile and his huge blue eyes had to turn into a whole ass adult who’s every bit as self-entitled as his son of a bitch of a Dad.

Hela tried to swallow her resentment and cut the guy some slack when she realized that resentment wouldn’t give her what she needed. She tried to make herself believe that it wasn’t Thor’s fault that he was born into a rich white upper class family as she tried to come up with something to say to him that sounded at least halfway believable to her own ears. Before she could finish, however, Thor already strode out again, face pinched, two large duffel bags strapped over his shoulders, which he threw into the trunk before he climbed back into his car and drove away again without so much as flicking a glance at his surroundings. _Spoiled rich kids_ , _phew_. They never have to learn to be on their guard all the fucking time _. Lucky bastards_.

Hela briefly contemplated following Thor but something kept her there even though the sight of that house made it lowkey uncomfortable to draw anything else than a sharp, shallow breaths. She waited anyway, waited for a few more hours, until Odin came home around eight, pulling into the driveway in a fucking Porsche. _Of course_. What else would that old bastard drive? She scoffed, trying to hate him, but even the short glimpse she caught of his face behind the wheel, illuminated by the dimmed glow the street lights cast over the dark car, immediately transported her back to her childhood and a disgusting mixture of helplessness and fear. It was probably the shadows but Odin looked even meaner, harder and more menacing than in her recollection, like a sinister villain in an action flick solely produced to satisfy male hero complexes, uncomfortably reminding her that he can (ab)use his position to destroy someone’s life with a snap of his fingers. Nope, talking to him really wasn’t an option. Not yet, at least. She knew, still knows, that she’ll eventually have to confront him but not before speaking to someone who possesses a tiny little shred of empathy first.

Not that she’s been the most empathetic person on this planet, far from it, but the difference is that she turned into the cold-hearted bitch she is now because she had to while Odin has always been this horrible, frigid excuse for a human being.

When neither Frigga nor Thor made another appearance until about nine thirty, Hela decided to call it a night and return once more the following day.

There is still no sign of either one of them though and Hela wonders whether Frigga is the one who’s in the hospital. Or, maybe, just maybe, Frigga isn’t even in the picture anymore because she realized what a terrible person she married and divorced him ages ago. It wouldn’t be surprising, right? Despite all of her own mother’s shortcomings, even that pathetic whore realized that Odin was bad news after about two years. Okay, compared to all the other men this basket case dragged into their lives like garbage bags from dark alleyways, Odin could be considered an innocent lamb in comparison, but that doesn’t make him less awful in his own fucking way and that’s not even the point. The point is that Frigga is nothing like her Mom. Frigga always kicked ass. And if even her Mom realized that Odin wasn’t good for her, someone like Frigga would have figured it out as well. Probably even faster. And Thor is obviously playing some type of team sport, so maybe he just paid someone who got a nasty bashing on some football or baseball field a visit and that’s why he was at the hospital.

Hela feels even more foolish now because, _fucking hell_ , when has reminiscing and dwelling in the past ever helped anyone? She doesn’t need this hypocritical, rich ass family. They never had anything to spare for her and they certainly won’t give her anything now. Plus, she got along just fine without them for the past eighteen years or so and she’ll get along without them in the future. A tiny part of her tries to make her aware just how much of an embellishment ‘just fine’ is but she shoves that thought away.

 _Fuck them_ , thinks Hela but just as she turns her keys in the ignition, ready to start her car, a Nissan drives past her, Frigga behind the wheel— _so she_ ’ _s still in the picture_ , _after all_ —and a teenage kid on the passenger seat. A teenage kid with pale skin and shoulder-length pitch-black hair.

Hela straightens in her seat, craning her neck to get a better look, but the car pulls into the driveway and a few seconds later, it’s gone from view.

 _Damn_.

Hela didn’t see nearly enough to determine whether the kid was a boy or a girl—it looked more like a girl—but still, the sight ignites a few tiny sparks of misplaced and quite ridiculous hope inside her chest. She stares after them even if there’s nothing to be seen except for an empty driveway, her heart pumping.

 _Could it be_?

 _No_.

The baby died there, she’s sure of that. Well, technically she can’t be sure because she was high as a kite but it had stopped crying long before she put it down. And even if she gave birth to some wunderkind that held on to life long enough to be found, Odin would have never taken enough pity on Frigga to let her raise a baby with Hela’s screwed up DNA. He could never bring himself to love her because she’s scum and he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to love something that came from the womb of a weak, pathetic drug addict. That’s why she … Nope, let’s not go there.

Hela is probably seeing what she wants to see because she is desperate. There is no use dwelling in the past. Absolutely none.

And yet she can’t coerce her body into driving away because, after all those years of fending for herself and inhaling everything in sight to forget the past, Thor fucking Odinson had to swagger into her life looking like a Men’s Health cover guy, rubbing her cocaine-corroded nose into what could have been.

* * *

“Hey, Champ!” Tony Stark yells as he clatters back into the apartment where Thor fucking Odinson is lying on the couch this very minute, his whole body aching from this morning’s practice to which he basically had to drag himself after pulling a Loki and getting wasted to block out his shit show of a life after half-heartedly typing out Mrs. Willowsʼs assignment the night before. Drinking himself into a stupor was a horrible idea, of course, because Coach Tyree looked him up and down with no less disgust than people have for a cockroach crawling over the kitchen counter but, then again, at least the sensation of a Jupiter-sized hangover has so far managed to distract him from thinking too much throughout the morning.

Until Tony so very kindly reminds him. “Babysitting mission accomplished?”

Thor turns around, sizing up his friend who lurks in the doorframe, wearing ridiculously tight pants and red tinted sunglasses. “Babysitting mission aborted,” he grumbles.

Tony’s face scrunches up in surprise. “How did that happen?”

Thor exhales a breath. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not acceptable because you look like absolute shit,” Tony informs him, doing him the favor of removing his sunglasses and revealing a pair of bloodshot eyes.

“So do you. _Again_ ,” Thor retorts. “Where have you been this time?”

“Tokyo.” He gives a shrug. “But let’s not talk about me because my life is awesome and you’re—”

“Just don’t, Tony,” Thor snaps because if Tony’s life really was that awesome he wouldn’t have to numb himself on a daily basis but he has zero energy for this kind of conversation right now. “I’m not in the mood for any more lectures on my brother.”

“Whoa, you just called me Tony.”

Thor can feel his anger flare up inside of him. “So?”

“You never call me that. Come on, I know I’m a terrible listener and I’m even worse at giving advice but I’m still leftover drunk on champagne and champagne always puts me in some kind of a sentimental mood. Besides, you’ll fuck up your game if you don’t unburden yourself before you hop on that plane, so, just lay it on me, dude.” He stretches out his arms. “Consider me your emotional garbage disposal.”

Thor sinks deeper into the pillows, the fight streaming out of him because despite the mask of cheerfully careless extravagance Tony wears most of the time, he always had his back and the last time he tried to help, Thor insulted him and he doesn’t even seem to be mad at him. Plus, Tony notices things other people don’t notice and he doesn’t have an agenda like his parents. “You’ve gotta give yourself some credit,” Thor relents. “You’re not really that terrible at giving advice. It’s more like I’m really terrible at taking your advice.”

“Wohoo, I like that song,” Tony exclaims with a shit-eating grin. “Turn up the volume for me, will ya?”

“Look, I’m sorry I was such a dick last time,” Thor says through clenched teeth. “Turns out you were right about … pretty much everything.”

“Care to be more specific than that?”

“I don’t even know where to start,” mumbles Thor, repeating his Dad’s words from the previous afternoon.

“You could start chronologically or alphabetically,” Tony suggests as he flops himself down next to him on the couch. “Or just with what’s bothering you the most.”

Thor inhales deeply, his throat still somewhat dry even after all the water he chugged over the course of the morning. “It turns out Loki does have … different personalities,” he begins softly and, as soon as these first words are out, the whole truth breaks out of him as if someone opened a floodgate in his throat. “And one of them is a lunatic who hates me and he just appeared when I gave Loki a driving lesson and drove the car onto the highway, almost getting us fucking killed, and then he just grinned and I lost my shit and I beat Loki up and then there’s a child personality who told me that Loki was abused as a kid and then I found out that he’s adopted because we drove to our lake cabin after the almost-accident and I found a photo album my parents locked up in a safe because my Mom was never pregnant in 2003 and then Loki had a panic attack type of breakdown and he tried to rip open his artery with his own fingernails and he’s fucking cutting himself, by the way, and he tore out his own hair and he said he doesn’t wanna live anymore and then my Mom showed up in the morning and took Loki to the hospital and now he’s there with a broken shoulder and then I ran into this really strange woman on the parking lot and she told me that my Dad was married to her Mom before he married mine and she hates me too because I allegedly destroyed her life and I have no fucking clue what I even did to anyone and then I confronted my Mom about the adoption and she doesn’t even have the energy to give a shit about me anymore and then I confronted my Dad and he told me that this woman, Hela, is Loki’s biological Mom and that she left him on their doorstep and that he almost died as a baby and she’s a drug addict, apparently, and Loki’s doctor threatened to call CPS because I beat up my own brother and then he told me to leave and my Mom didn’t even stop him because she only cares about Loki at this point and my Dad doesn’t care about Loki at all and basically told me to drop him like a hot potato and my Mom left me a long ass voice message about how sorry she was that she let me down and that she still loves me and … and I don’t know what to do because everything sucks and my coach is livid because I can’t get my head in the game and it’s just … It sucks. Everything just really fucking sucks right now.”

“Holy shit,” gasps Tony after a while, his eyes widened in disbelief. “Your family is even more dysfunctional than the Umbrella Academy.”

Thor breathes out his frustration in response to what is probably another pop-cultural reference he has absolutely no use for. “I have no idea what the hell that means.”

“Sorry, I … it’s just … holy shit,” repeats Tony. “Holy fucking shit!”

 _Well_ , _that pretty much sums it up_ , _doesn’t it?_ “Yeah.”

“I mean I can’t say I’m surprised Loki’s adopted,” Tony breaks the silence pouring into the room after a while. “That one should’ve been a no-brainer.”

Thor huffs a desperate laugh. “I know, right?”

“But all the rest? Damn.” Tony’s teeth begin to pull at his bottom lip. “You might want to revoke your earlier statement about my capability of giving advice because, holy fuck, I don’t even know what to say.” He gives Thor’s shoulder a bro-squeeze. “That sucks, man. I’m sorry.”

A laugh tears free from Thor’s lungs. “It does. But it also … kinda explains some things. About Loki, I mean.”

Tony nods vaguely.

“It’s just …” Thor pauses, thinking again of everything he learned from his brother’s child personality. “I have no idea why there’s this one side of him that hates me. That … person blocked me, insulted me, tried to push me away, provoked me into flipping my lid and beating him up and then he said, ‘I knew it’. He’s trying to convince Loki that I don’t care about him anymore, that I failed him and won’t protect him anymore, and I have no idea what I did to piss him off.” Another desperate laugh slips past his lips. “Fuck, that sounds so crazy.”

“Yeah, but it’s Loki we’re talking about, so.” Tony gives a shrug, trying to be humorous.

There’s another moment of silence after that because Thor can’t deal with humorous right now. “And he was abused, Tony,” Thor whispers when he can’t take the silence threatening to crush the air out of his lungs anymore. “He was abused in our house by our nanny or whoever else while we were out there, obliviously playing in your backyard.”

“Hey,” Tony reprimands him, giving his shoulder a more forceful squeeze. “That’s not your fault. You were a fucking kid and there’s no way you could have possibly imagined stuff like this happening in your wildest dreams. Kids are naïve and dumb. They still believe that the world’s a happy place.”

“But still, I …” Thor buries his face in his hands, trying to push back the tears.

“No, you listen to me, Champ,” says Tony. “You did everything for that little pain in the ass. You did much more than any other big brother would have ever done. You didn’t _fail_ him. Beating him up was a real shitty thing to do, yes, but I guess you know that already. And there is no way in hell anything else in this giant mess is your fault because, as I said, you can’t fix Loki and it’s not your job to fix him. He needs professional help and—”

“My Mom got him a therapist. He’ll start on Wednesday.”

“Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? Once he’s in therapy, I’m sure you guys will figure out why this one Loki holds a grudge against you and your Mom will relax a little and try to see your side of things because she isn’t a bad person and I know she loves you. I guess you just have to give it some time.”

Thor nods weakly. “Yeah.”

“Your Dad though?” Tony sucks in some air through clenched teeth and makes a grimace. “He’s a self-absorbed asshole and, whatever _he_ told you, make sure you don’t listen to any of it.”

“He had a point or two though,” Thor sighs.

“I highly doubt it and we both know that I know what I’m talking about because my old man has a point or two sometimes but even if he technically has a point, he’s still manipulating people with that point and it’s about time we do the exact opposite of whatever it is those old bastards tell us to do.”

 _The best you can do is to go back to your own apartment_ , _to your own life_ , _to your own career_. _Let them drive each other crazy_. Damn it all to fucking hell, he did exactly what Odin told him to do like some tame fucking little papa’s boy and he didn’t even question it even though his Dad claimed to love Loki after calling him a damaged kid from a cursed bloodline. Who the fuck says things like that? A cursed bloodline?! What the hell is a cursed bloodline?!

Tony is still speaking and Thor tries to refocus on his friend’s words. “You need to find a balance between dropping Loki like a hot potato and dropping everything for him. You know, like, balancing out your Mom’s overprotectiveness and your Dad’s underprotectiveness and combining it into a … healthy amount of protectiveness.”

“How can you still be this smart with all the poison you’ve poured into your body for years?” Thor grumbles.

“What can I say? It’s a gift.” Tony sighs. “Well, actually it’s a curse but I’m making shit tons of money with my brain, so you won’t hear me complaining.” He pauses for the fraction of a second. “All that much.”

“Gosh, you’re so alike sometimes,” Thor mumbles.

Tony swallows. “You don’t mean me and … Loki?”

“Yeah.”

The gifted genius looks mortally offended. “Ex-fucking-cuse me?”

“What?” Thor flashes him a grin. “You’re both painfully sarcastic, self-destructive smartasses who try to piss off their fathers after failing to impress them and who can see straight through everyone except for themselves.”

“You may have a point there, Champ, but still, you of all people have zero rights to call anyone out on their Daddy issues,” Tony retorts. “You know that, right?”

“Point taken,” Thor laughs because Tony actually managed to dissolve some of his tension with his presence alone. “Thank you.”

“Seems I was at the right place at the right time, huh?” Tony flashes him a grin. “Now, are you good? Because I really need to crash. My vision is kinda blurry.”

“I am,” says Thor. “Thank you. I really appreciate … I mean … I’m … I get so defensive over Loki sometimes and I know I’ve rubbed a lot of people the wrong way but you always—”

“Whoa, stop. I’m not sentimental enough for that kind of apologetic bullshit, okay?” Tony interrupts him. “We’re good. But if I ever get sober, I’ll expect you to return the favor.”

Thor winks at him. “If that day ever comes, absolutely.”

Tony grimaces at him before he scrambles to his feet. He walks out of the living room but then he turns around once more. “Since we’re apparently so alike, there’s one last piece of advice I got for you from my bottomless well of wisdom. Maybe you wouldn’t butt heads with Loki all the time if you tried to speak his language every once in a while.”

That gives Thor pause. “And what language would that be?”

“Misunderstood genius?” Tony asks back as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

* * *

“Thanks, Mom,” Loki whispers as he lowers himself into the bathtub Frigga filled for him to help him clean up, his initial indignant resentment to not being able to shower by himself gone for the moment. His embarrassment isn’t gone, however, and he apologizes for being a burden even though she figures that he is more embarrassed about the cuts and he feels so incredibly fragile under her palms that she is transported right back to those times she cradled his infant body to her chest to let him absorb all her warmth.

“It’s alright,” says Frigga, stroking over his head. “Just relax.”

“No, it’s not,” Loki grumbles. “If I hadn’t talked Thor into this, this wouldn’t have happened and I wouldn’t be a bother now.”

“You aren’t a bother, honey. You never have been and you never will be, okay?” She reaches for his hairbrush and brushes his hair as she did when he was boy before she turns the water on and starts washing his hair, gently massaging the shampoo into his scalp.

He closes his eyes, a soft smile appearing on his lips. “That feels good, actually.”

As Frigga cleans him up, her mind replays the events of the previous twenty-four hours again, making her heart ache for both of her sons. She left Thor a voice message about an hour after he left, apologizing to him because she sacrificed his teenage years for the sake of Loki’s mental health. Telling him that he deserved better than that. Assuring him how much she loves him and that he’s so much more to her than just Loki’s keeper because, even if she did such a lousy job of showing it recently, she loves him so much because of who he is as a person. Telling him why. Telling him that she loves him so much because, even if he has inherited his father’s temper and lost control under pressure this one time, he is a good person at heart. A much better person than Odin and her could ever be. Telling him he is a good person because he puts a smile on everyone’s face with that sheepish kind of humor of his that he uses to make people laugh when they’re upset. Because he always tries to help everyone and cheer them up when they’re down. Because he’s kind and loving and never wants to anyone harm except for those who harm his family. Because he knows the difference between right and wrong and turned his back on the firm because of it. Because he despises lies and injustice and hypocrisy. Because he’s fearless and loyal and protective and beautiful and because he was all of those things before Loki was even born. Promising him that she’ll tell him and Loki the truth when he returns from Wyoming because that’s what they both deserve even though she still doesn’t know how to do it without shocking Loki to the core. The words are all there but she has no idea how to express them to make them sound less outrageous because neither of them is in the right mental state to process them now. Loki certainly isn’t but Thor has been through his own share of hardship this week and he’s certainly inching closer to his own breaking point.

And then there’s the one question Thor asked her that didn’t even register at first but that has kept playing in her mind over and over again ever since he turned around and stomped off the day before. _Do you even know what happened in your absence_? It’s horrendous to even think about what that could mean but she didn’t ask him about that because she knows that she needs to give him space so that he can mentally prepare for his game tomorrow.

And then there’s the conversation she had with Dr. Strange before he reluctantly discharged Loki because her son wanted to go home. He told her that Loki’s blood test results came back and that they were cause for alarm because, apart from his obvious weight loss, he is displaying other symptoms of malnourishment. Low blood sugar. Low iron levels. Low blood pressure. Slow heart rate. Electrolytes out of balance. He told her that he’d been serious about alerting CPS if Loki required similar medical attention in the future because the bruises combined with the state his vitals are in were a huge red flag for any medical professional. She told him the truth then, told him how Loki hasn’t had much of an appetite lately and about everything else that’s been going on with her son. She also told him that he’d start therapy very soon. He looked her straight in the eye then, telling her that he’d strongly advise her to consider in-patient treatment instead of weekly appointments with a psychologist. Seeing how exhausted Loki is, she knows that he was right, of course he was, and she’s still trying to figure out how to present the idea to her son without causing another breakdown.

And then the doorbell rings, startling her out of her thoughts and startling Loki too, whose eyes snap open in alarm. “Who is this?”

“Well, how am I supposed to know that from up here?” Frigga asks half in jest, which elicits a faint smile from him. “It doesn’t matter, though. We’re not expecting anyone and if it’s important, they’ll try again later. You might want to start thinking about what you want me to make for lunch instead,” she adds, praying that his appetite isn’t gone again after he did eat his hospital food the previous evening and this morning. “I was thinking we could—”

The doorbell rings again, twice this time, cutting her off mid-sentence.

“Seems important to me,” Loki murmurs.

Frigga exhales an annoyed breath. “I’ll go check. Please wait for me before you try to get out of the tub, okay? And remember that you’re not supposed to raise your arms above your head and please try to keep your stitched-up wrist above water.”

Loki rolls his eyes at her. “Yes, Ma’am,” he mocks but there’s an actual smile playing upon his lips. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m okay.” His smile widens, then turns into a smirk. “For now, so you’d better hurry.”

Frigga knows he’s joking but she still can’t help but think of all the times his mood shifted rapidly from one second to the next.

“I was kidding,” Loki sighs when he sees her face. “I’ll be okay. The hot water feels really good and I’m actually kinda relaxed.”

“Alright. I’ll be right back.”

The doorbell rings a third time as Frigga jogs down the stairs and she curses whoever stands at the other side of that door and cheats her out of spending precious time with Loki when he is, well, Loki. She yanks the door open, foolishly hoping it’s just some mailman delivering a package, but then she sees who it is and the thin steel rod that’s been holding her existence together for the past weeks begins to snap.

“Surprise,” says Hela, a nasty smirk plucking at her lips as she stretches out her arms. “Did you miss me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tadaaaa. Don't we all love a good cliff-hanger? *winks*
> 
> I'm sorry by the way, I thought there'd be more Loki in this one but then I squeezed in Thor's part because that boy needed someone in his corner that isn't Odin fucking Borson. The next chapter will start off with Loki's POV, I promise. 
> 
> See y'all soon xx


	26. After all this time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family reunion *coughs*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so, I know that some of y'all are kinda rooting for Hela, which I appreciate A LOT because she's a great character, but I kinda need her as an antagonist in this; which is why I kept some of her, how do I say it, rather ruthless traits for this story. 
> 
> Now, onwards! x

**_Friday, September 27 th, 2019  
  
_ **

**_54 hours to the incident  
  
_ **

Everything feels wrong.

Well, technically, everything except for the pain in his shoulder feels _right_ —his Mom’s affection, her fingers in his hair, her arms around him, her body warmth, the soothing temperature of the bath water, the breakfast in his stomach—which is what makes it feel _so_ wrong. For weeks or months, who can tell really, The Voices have snarled at him all day, every day and now there’s been radio silence in his head since yesterday morning. He woke up the previous day, longing for his mother’s comfort, and Nikias didn’t call him pathetic when he burrowed into her embrace after confiding in her. He fell asleep and woke up, still alone inside his head. He talked to his Mom, watched some TV, ate dinner and fell back asleep and, when he woke up again this morning, there was _still_ silence. He could eat and relish his mother’s touch, all in complete silence. It’s eerily too good to be true. It’s like he zoned out in the cabin’s bathroom after losing his goddamn shit and tearing out his hair and clawing at his wounds—fuck it, Thor will definitely think he lost the rest of his mind now—and woke up in another timeline in that hospital room. Another timeline or another reality like in some sci-fi comic in which The Voices never existed.

Of course, Loki knows that this is impossible because his life _isn’t_ a comic or a movie, which means there has to be another reason they are keeping quiet now. Maybe the sedative lulled them to sleep, in which case Dr. van Dyne might be willing to prescribe him something to keep his head quiet, which would be a bliss and if that were to happen, the accident would have totally been worth it. Maybe they just didn’t want to risk exposing themselves in front of the doctors though and shut the hell up to prevent Loki from accidentally talking back out loud to one of them in his flustered state. But then again, they warned him not to mention them in front of anyone, didn’t they, so it’s far more likely that they are actually pissed right now because he told Thor and his Mom about them. They are probably regrouping in the farthest corners of the junglescape inside his mind at this very moment, concocting a punishment that he won’t hear coming.

Loki shudders at the idea and sinks deeper into the water, obediently keeping his left arm resting on the edge of the tub. He can feel the goosebumps prickling over his arm and, suddenly, his blood runs ice cold even with the rest of his body immersed in the hot bath.

No, something _is_ wrong.

Loki sits up ramrod straight, his eyes flitting to his bathrobe hanging on the hook of the shower wall.

* * *

Frigga’s stunned and rather terrified expression when she realizes who’s standing in front of her after a few seconds of gaping like an idiot is a true delight because it gives Hela an advantage she never had before when dealing with this family. Frigga murmurs Hela’s name, her complexion suddenly whiter than the sheets in the motel room—not that those were actually white though, come to think of it—and then takes half a step back into the house, reaching for a key ring and protectively shutting the door behind her, guarding her precious home from the intruder.

Hela just smirks at her with raised eyebrows, challenging her to make the first move.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” Frigga stammers and the naked terror flashing through her eyes fills Hela with so much more satisfaction than she could have ever hoped for when she rang the bell after debating with herself for over an hour like some scared pussy ass little school girl. “After all this time … I thought …”

“Let me guess.” Hela mock-strokes her chin. “You probably thought I died a miserable death in some filthy back alley with a needle sticking out of my arm.”

Frigga swallows and, dammit, she’s looking so very old after all those years. Well, she’s probably fifty now or something but, even if she’s still in pretty good shape figure-wise, her eyes look very tired and the skin around them is dry and wrinkled. Aging really is a bitch. Even hitting thirty was an absolute nightmare. “The thought has crossed my mind once or twice, yes, but what I was—”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Frigga inhales, then exhales, obviously scrambling for words. “What I was trying to say is that I thought you’d be back a lot sooner.”

Hela shrugs because the other woman is no longer intimidating or awe-inspiring in any way. She’s just a pathetic old hag who could never bring herself to see through her powerful white asshole husband’s shit. “I never had a good reason to.”

Frigga is slowly regaining her composure. “Then why are you here now?”

“Because I’m almost sober now and they tell you it’s never too late to try to make things right and clean up your past,” Hela recites the speech she practiced in the car but, unfortunately, she fails to take herself seriously delivering this dreadfully out-of-touch-with-real-life NA bullshit and bursts into a giggle before she can finish. “Yeah, who am I kidding, right? I need to know what happened to the kid.”

Frigga narrows her eyes at her. “Why?”

“Because it’s my kid and I kinda have a right to know?”

“Well, I’d say you forfeited that right when you just discarded him like a piece of trash and then just walked away,” Frigga whispers. “You almost let him _die_ and just … walked away!”

Her voice is vibrating with held back tears and Hela can’t believe the implications behind the other woman’s emotional state. Could she really be that lucky for once? She half-gasps, half-laughs, leaning against the banister. “Don’t tell me you kept it?”

There’s a brief moment of hesitation. “What makes you think that?”

“Oh, come on, Friggs,” Hela teases her. “I might have fucked my own brain over with drugs but I’m not stupid. I saw the kid on the passenger seat when you pulled into the driveway earlier and I see your protective stance right now. There’s no way in hell you’re gonna let me into that house and there’s really only one logical explanation for that.” Frigga’s composure begins to crack again and to see her struggling like this feels almost better than the bliss of a cocaine-induced high. “I need to speak to him. I’ll make it quick, I promise. I just need to ask him something and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Speak to him about what?” Frigga squeezes out.

“Well, I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

Frigga snorts a sharp laugh. “That child is my responsibility now, Hela, and I’m not going to let you waltz into the house and turn his whole world upside down.”

“Ah, I get it. You never told him the truth about where he came from.”

“I meant to, at first, but then you never showed up again in sixteen goddamn years and I …” Frigga gulps but then, suddenly, something flashes through her eyes and her consternation transforms itself into anger. _Uh-oh_. “I don’t even _know_ the truth, Hela. The whole truth. The truth I’ve lived with all this time after you didn’t even ring the doorbell or kept him safe and warm until you could be sure that he’d survive is that his birthmother almost let him freeze to death because she couldn’t bring herself to care for him. And that’s really not something you’d tell an innocent child.”

“Yeah, I’m a horrible person,” Hela snaps. “Just spare me the lecture, okay?”

“Just tell me what happened to you,” Frigga says and there are actual fucking tears pooling into her eyes and she actually fucking dares to pity her. “What happened to you that you would leave this baby … I just want to understand.”

“You want to understand what happened?” Hela guffaws. “What happened was that I begged your cold-hearted asshole of a husband to take me in because my Mom’s boyfriend was beating the crap out of both of us every single night and he still kicked me out. What happened was that you didn’t even try to convince him even though you assured me everything was going to be fine. You guys threw me the fuck out and left me to myself when I was fourteen years old. Guess what that does to a person. Guess what working the streets does to a teenager. I learned not to care.”

“That’s not true,” Frigga whispers, her ugly ass tears spilling out of her fucking wannabe savior puppy eyes and streaming down her cheeks. “You have no idea how hard I tried to change Odin’s mind. Night after night, I begged him to adopt you but he wouldn’t listen to me, so I—”

“You chose your own.”

“Yes, I did. Are you honestly blaming me for that? Did you honestly expect me to divorce Odin and rob my own son of his father?”

Hela shrugs. If she really allowed herself to think about it, she’d have to admit to herself how ridiculous that sounds because who in their right mind would do that? But Hela usually doesn’t allow herself to think too deeply about stuff because thinking too deeply about stuff is what makes life unnecessarily difficult. “I’m sure you did Thor a huge favor with that, considering what a kind and loving individual your husband is.”

“Just tell me why you left your baby here,” Frigga continues, her voice raspy. “If you really want to meet him, that’s the least you can do.”

“I don’t have to ask for your permission to see him. I gave birth to him. I’m his mother.”

“You might have given birth to him,” Frigga spits, “but you’re not his mother. Mother is a social category.”

“Oh, look at you throwing big words at me.” Hela chuckles. “Look, I don’t need you to tell me that I’m selfish. That’s how I went by, okay? That’s how I _survived_ after you guys kicked me to the curb. But that kid has my DNA and, believe it or not, I actually know a few dirty cops who I could tip off about this teenage boy living under your roof that isn’t legally yours because you have no adoption papers and if you do, they’re certainly forged. Or maybe I just phone CPS directly?”

Frigga’s face falls.

“Did you seriously come here to threaten my mother?” announces a deep voice and Hela swings around, gazing into Thor’s pinched face as he strides up towards them. _Dammit_. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with this family?”

“Thor,” gasps Frigga, her complexion finally resembling the undead kind of pale when her son’s words sink in. “W-ait, y-you two know each other?”

Hela chuckles. “We go way back.”

“Way back meaning yesterday,” grumbles Thor, his eyes on Hela even as he speaks to his mother. “She chatted me up on the hospital parking lot yesterday and accused me of ruining her life, saying she hoped Dad had a heart attack and telling me we’re all dirt.”

“If I recall correctly,” Hela objects, “I said I’d rather eat dirt than to sit down at a lunch table with you.”

“Exactly,” Thor bellows and she can vividly hear Odin’s voice too, like some weird echo clattering through her skull. “But still you’re here now, continuing to insult and threaten my family even though you have no fucking leverage whatsoever. Do you really think that either those few dirty cops you have on speed dial or the lawyers you can afford would stand a chance against my father in court after what you did to my baby brother? You’re gonna lose and you’re gonna make a fool of yourself!”

Damn him for playing that card. He’s probably right though and Hela is sober enough to realize that she neither has the time nor the money to throw herself headfirst into some lawsuit she’s probably never gonna win. _Damn them both_. _Fucking snobs_. “Oh, I’m not sure so about that,” she continues anyway. “You see, I wasn’t really in my right mind when all of that happened. I was a sixteen-year-old whore high on speed who didn’t know what to do with a baby that never shut up. I was scared and confused but, instead of leaving the baby in a dumpster like my pimp told me to, I brought it here where I knew it’d be safe, which has to count for something and I’m sure the Jury will understand that. They love good tear-jerker stories about abused children and former addicts wallowing in regret and trying to make things right after all, don’t they?”

“Regret, my ass.” The veins in Thor’s temples begin to throb, thrusting through his skin like miniature mountain ridges as he takes a step towards her. “You’re fucking smirking, you fucking—”

“Thor, stop,” Frigga urges him, her hand pulling back her precious son’s arm before her eyes travel to Hela. “Y-you told him what you did?”

Hela holds up her hands. “Nope.”

“Dad did,” says Thor.

“Now, that’s a surprise, isn’t it?” Hela giggles just as Frigga whispers, “Wh-what? When?”

“I went to the courthouse yesterday after the doctor kicked me out,” Thor replies on a half-shrug.

“The old bastard coming clean,” Hela tsks. “I never thought I’d see the day. I’m curious though. Did he own up to what he did?”

“Do you even care?” Thor asks back, challenging her with a sinister grin.

Anger flares up in the pit of her stomach but before Hela can come up with a witty response, the door opens a bit and the kid pokes his head through the door. “Is something wrong, Mom?”

 _Holy fucking shit_. The first thing Hela sees isn’t how skinny he is or how he looks so much like her when she was that age with his pale face, his prominent cheekbones and his raven-black shoulder-long hair. No, the first thing she sees is the nasty ass bluish-purple-black bruise and swollen skin around his left eye, and it’s like gazing into a mirror showing her sorry ass teenage self. The only problem is that she despises the weak, pathetic little bitch she once was and she instantly despises him too for looking so beaten and so small and so gay. She despises Odin too for probably doing that to him and she despises Frigga for lecturing her about not caring for him even when she probably let it happen and she despises Thor even more when he tells his ‘brother’ to go back inside.

“Yeah right,” says the boy as he crosses his arms in front of his chest. “What’s going on here?”

“Go back inside,” Frigga repeats in a broken whisper, looking no less alive than a ghost.

“Now, will you look at that?” Hela chuckles. The boy she squeezed out of her pussy what feels like at least two lifetimes ago narrows his blazing green eyes at her. “At what?”

“Your face.”

“There’s nothing to look at. I got into an accident,” snaps the kid. “And what business is that of yours anyway? Who the hell are you?”

“An accident,” Hela giggles as she whips out her phone and snaps a picture of him. “Sure.” She fixes her gaze first on Frigga, then on Thor, waving her phone for emphasis. “You might want to rethink what you said about how I’m gonna lose.”

Thor lunges towards her but she slips her phone back into her pocket, holding up her hands. “Now, now, we’re not gonna resort to violence here, are we?”

Thor blows out a breath, trying to control that irritating temper of his.

“There’s a few things I have to take care of but I’ll be back. I’ll give you until Sunday afternoon,” Hela decides because if Frigga believes the kid to be her responsibility, she might as well leave it to her to break the news to him. She’s never been good with touchy-feely stuff and Frigga will probably manage to tell the kid the truth in a way that doesn’t immediately destroy the faint chance of his cooperation.

Thor’s nostrils are flaring. “You goddamn—”

“Hey,” Hela playfully boxes his arm because she can’t resist to put his temper to the test, “maybe your Mom can make dinner for all of us or something.” She guffaws and then she turns around and walks away, relishing in how she finally managed to ruffle their feathers for a change.

“Hey! You can’t just take my picture,” the kid yells after her. “That’s a violation of privacy!”

* * *

“She can’t just … Who _was_ that woman and what the hell did she want from us? Why did she take my picture and what did she mean by losing?” Loki yells as Thor and Frigga usher him back inside before his brain has a chance to make sense of what just happened. His heart picks up speed because, suddenly, he can feel the presence of The Voices creeping back up on him. Too good to be fucking true indeed. _Fuck everything_. He tries to focus on the events of the previous twenty-four hours—the brief glimpse into normality he didn’t think he could ever have anymore—to anchor himself and his mind to this moment because if he loses control now, he’ll miss something very important and he can’t let that happen. He can’t. _He just fucking can’t_.

 _Focus_. _Just focus_. Loki wraps the fluffy black bathrobe he struggled into upstairs tighter around himself, searching for his mother’s gaze. “Mom?”

“She’s,” Frigga begins but she interrupts herself with a sharp breath, her hand clutching at her chest, massaging her heart, and panic creeps up on Loki because seeing the people who are supposed to stay strong to protect you crack under pressure under your very eyes is one of the worst feelings in the world.

“She’s an old family acquaintance,” provides Thor. “Her name is Hela.”

“But why did she,” Loki stammers, all thoughts fleeing his mind for a second, but Thor has already fixed his attention on Frigga. “Mom, what’s wrong?” he asks, an edge of panic to his own voice as his hands jerk forward to support her elbow.

“Nothing,” Frigga pants. “I just …It’s just …”

“Come on.” Thor walks her into the house and through the hallway, sitting her down on one of the dining room chairs. “Just breathe, okay? Everything’s gonna turn out fine.”

Frigga draws another sharp breath and it’s painfully clear that she isn’t gonna be just fine but, even if their Mom told him Thor wasn’t nearly as dumb as he made him out to be all the time, Thor is evidently still dumb in the way that he thinks people will calm down if only you tell them to relax. He told Loki the same thing yesterday morning, didn’t he? _Just breathe_ , he said. _Everything’s fine_. _You’re just having a panic attack_.

 _Just_.

 _Yeah_ , _right_. Loki rolls his eyes and walks to his Dad’s liquor cabinet because, in contrast to Thor, he knows that breathing doesn’t help shit when you’re freaking out. There’s only one thing he knows that helps when you think you’re going to die, which is why he retrieves a decanter of a scotch and a glass, pouring about three fingers’ worth of liquor into it.

“What the hell are you doing?” snaps Thor.

Loki shrugs. “I’m fixing her a drink.”

“It’s barely past noon,” Thor grumbles as Frigga just continues to pant.

“Tell me, brother, does that clock actually care about whether or not you can breathe?”

Thor just gapes at him. “What?”

“That clock over there doesn’t care at what point of the day you have drink. It’s an inanimate object enslaving us to the human-made segmentation and social construction of time,” Loki replies and, feeling Nikias stealing into the cave, he brings the glass to his lips on impulse and gulps down the scotch. “Whew, this is gonna work well with the painkillers they gave me,” he muses as he pours a second one.

“Give me that,” snaps Thor. He wrenches both the glass and the decanter from Loki’s hands, causing a bit of the liquid to slosh over the rim of the glass, and puts them on the table in front of their mother.

“Just go for it, Mom,” says Loki, inwardly trying to calm himself because he can feel Nikias all over his damn mind even though the usually so talkative bastard doesn’t say a word. “It’ll help with the tightness in your chest.”

“Are you even Loki right now?” asks Thor and the question makes Loki feel as if he’s losing touch with the ground under his bare feet because, _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ , even if Thor said he believed he knew what Loki was trying to say, Loki didn’t think he actually figured out what’s really going on in just a few days. Why is he so fucking clever all of a sudden? Damn him.

“W-who else would I be?” Loki stammers.

“Guys, please,” whispers Frigga.

“How am _I_ supposed to know that?” Thor grumbles. “It’s not like I’ve ever been properly introduced.”

The bottom drops out of Loki’s stomach because Thor fucking knows, he really fucking knows and what the fucking hell happened in that car after he blacked out???

 _You chose to tell them, didn’t you? Now, you’ve gotta live with it_. _It’s your own goddamn fault_.

Aaaand, there he is.

 _Fuck off_.

Frigga exhales a long breath before she takes the drink and slugs it back, both Loki’s and Thor’s eyes on her. She exhales another long breath and places the glass back on the table.

“So?” asks Loki. “Are you guys gonna tell me who that weird ass woman was or …?”

“Yes but, please, honey, sit down,” Frigga murmurs and Loki reluctantly lowers himself onto a chair across from his mother, his stomach clenching in response to her pained expression. Thor slides down on the chair next to him, his face screwed up in anger.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, your father and I kept some secrets from you both,” Frigga begins, her breath still hitching.

“Yeah,” mutters Loki, trying to admonish her and give her a break all at once. “If this family didn’t have any secrets, we wouldn’t need safes and false drawer bottoms in this house.”

Frigga blows out a breath and reaches for Loki’s hands, squeezing them in both of hers. “I just want you to know that what I’m about to tell you doesn’t change anything, okay?”

“It doesn’t,” confirms Thor and Loki can feel a huge ass brick materialize in the pit of his stomach.

“Wh-what? You’re in this together?” Loki whispers, gazing at his brother. “What the hell is going on here?”

“We’re not,” says Thor. “I just happened to—”

 _He’s lying_. _He’s always lying_ _to you_.

Loki’s eyes squeeze shut against his will. _Go away_. _I need to know what’s going on here_. _We can talk later_.

 _As if you’re gonna be able to handle the truth_. _You still refuse to acknowledge why your shoulder is actually in that fucking sling right now_.

“Loki, honey, what’s going on?” asks Frigga.

“Nothing,” Loki grinds out and then Thor’s hand lands on his forearm, gently squeezing it and tethering him to the world outside his head in a way that Frigga’s touch never managed to. “Whatever it is, just get it over with, Mom.”

Frigga gulps, her mind working feverishly behind her forehead. “Remember how you tried to convince your father that gender identities are socially constructed and not determined by biology?”

“Yes?” confirms Loki, every nerve in his body suddenly on high alert because that’s a very suspicious preface for the revelation of a family secret.

“The same goes for family,” says Frigga and Loki can instantly feel his connection to reality slipping away from him. He instinctively reaches for Thor’s hand, squeezing it, searching for a way to stay in control. “You see, I’m your mother, Loki, but I … I wasn’t the one to give birth to you.”

The color leaches from the room and Loki’s vision fuzzes at the edges. “Wh-what?”

“Odin and I, we are not your biological parents,” Frigga elaborates even though he heard her the first time but it just doesn’t make ANY SENSE because he beat himself up so many times for being such a lanky, wimpy loser compared to his brother and she never told him that it was his DNA and that he wouldn’t EVER have a chance to build muscle or look masculine enough to actually leave an impression on his unimpressionable father who isn’t even his father, HOLY FUCKING HELL, Odin isn’t his father and Loki isn’t his son and that’s why Odin never cared about him the way he cared about Thor and, _dammit_ , he is going by the wrong fucking name and everything makes sense now, doesn’t it, he’s this crazy, messed-up, traumatized little mishap that is such a wretched little fuck-up next to his fucking college football star of a brother because Thor isn’t his fucking brother and Nikias probably knew that all along— _you fucking son of a bitch_ , _why did you never tell me_?—and that’s why Thor is so perfect and that’s why Loki is such a failure and that’s why his brain is so screwed up and why he hasn’t felt like himself for a few years because he _isn’t_ himself, he’s _never_ really been himself or, rather, he tried to be the wrong self when he was child before he grew into a teenager and realized that something about him was different and that he doesn’t belong here in Odin’s home and now he finally knows that it’s because Odin doesn’t care for the pathetic scrawny little crybaby Frigga undoubtedly talked him into adopting.

 _I had no fucking clue_.

 _You’re lying_.

 _I never fucking lied to you_ , _Loki_.

“Loki?”

Loki jerks away from Thor and wraps his arms around himself. “Why me?”

“What do you mean, honey?”

“Why adopt _me_?” Loki whispers and Frigga’s expression crumbles. “I’m sure there were other babies that didn’t cry as much as I did. You could have picked one that wasn’t gonna piss Dad off right away. Why did you pick me?”

“That’s not …” Frigga inhales a deep breath.

“Well, technically, they didn’t adopt you,” says Thor, taking over for their Mom. “Not in the traditional sense of the word.”

“You _knew_?” Loki asks but it comes out as a scream because Nikias is right, isn’t he, they all lied to him, and fuck Thor for rubbing his nose into his abandonment issues even though he apparently knew where they fucking come from all this time.

“Yes but only for two days,” Thor replies but Loki is hardly listening because, suddenly, something clicks inside his mind when he remembers why they’re having this conversation in the first place and it’s not because Frigga suddenly decided to tell him the truth because she thought he deserves to know where he actually came from.

No, it’s because that Hela woman showed up and forced her hand. That woman who looked a lot like him and said she was gonna be back on Sunday afternoon.

Tears well into Loki’s eyes and claw at his throat and he feels so very hollow again and his vision almost blurs into complete whiteness because how is any of this even supposed to make any fucking sense and why didn’t he just fucking kill himself yesterday morning when he had the chance?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why me?! *presses tissue to nose and snivels quietly*


	27. Mark my words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frigga finally comes clean.

Frigga attempts to force some air back into her lungs for what feels like the hundredth time, tries to force herself to recover her strength, but ever since she swung the front door open and met Hela’s pale ice green gaze, her mind has turned into a void in which all she can hear are Odin’s words. His words from then and now, continuously echoing through her skull, overlapping into a horrid cacophony of accusations.

 _I will not raise that girl’s boy_ , _do you hear me_? _With all the drugs she’s been taking_ , _he’ll be a mess_.

 _I’m telling you this decision will come back to haunt you one day_.

“So, this woman … Hela … She’s …” Loki glances up at them even though his eyes aren’t focused and his voice is oddly distorted, as if there’s an echo to it; a hostile, abrasive echo.

 _Mark my words_ , _Frigga_ , _learning the truth will destroy him_.

“She gave birth to you,” says Frigga and, even though she is fairly certain she just shattered her boy’s world to pieces, she feels a strange and probably highly inappropriate sort of liberation now that the whole truth is finally out in the open. Not least of all because it allows her to breathe again at last, breathing without the crushing weight that sat on her chest before she spilled the proverbial beans. “Yes.”

 _Mark my words_.

 _It will destroy him_.

“This woman, who just snapped a photo of my bruises and then told you guys that you might want to rethink whether or not she is going to lose, gave _birth_ to me?” Loki asks in the harsher, more hostile voice. The tears that welled into his eyes earlier spill out and he furiously wipes them away with the back of his hand, his gaze hardening. “Lose what? A custody battle? And what did you mean by ‘old family acquaintance’ or ‘non-traditional adoption’? Who is she?”

 _Here comes the tricky part_ , thinks Thor. He still can’t tell what made him gather his things and jump into his car as soon as Tony dove headfirst into his pillows to sleep off his champagne buzz. Probably his friend’s speech about how it was about time they did the exact opposite of whatever it was their old men told them to do but it doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is that he followed his sudden intuition and it was good that he did because if he hadn’t been there, Frigga might have crumbled in front of Hela. Thanks to his intervention, she only crumbled after the door fell shut behind them and no matter what Tony said about him not being able to fix Loki, which is almost certainly true, he knows that Tony, despite his remarkable powers of observation, still never fully understood Thor’s role in this family. For better or for worse, his mother and his brother need him strong and Thor won’t let them down. Not at a time like this. He had his moment of weakness when he blew his lights out the previous night but from now on, he’ll stay strong for them both because Tony was right, wasn’t he, Loki will start therapy soon and Thor can still start working on the whole healthy kind of protectiveness thing when this weekend is over.

“Who is she really and where did she come from all of a sudden?” Loki demands. “I want the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And I want it _now_.”

Frigga draws a sharp breath because, like her eldest, she is very well aware that this is the part that’s too outrageous to process for anyone in their right mind; let alone someone as mentally unstable as Loki is right now. “Odin was married before we met and Hela … She’s the daughter of his first wife.”

The color drains from Loki’s cheeks. “What?”

“Which means she’s our half-sister,” gasps Thor because it didn’t occur to him before how fucked-up this family constellation is because if Hela is kinda his sister, doesn’t that mean that _he_ is kinda Loki’s uncle and, _dammit_ , that thought alone is so fucking ridiculous. “Which means that—”

“She’s _not_ your half-sister,” Frigga corrects him. “You’re not related. You barely even knew her. She was living with us for a few weeks when she was fourteen and you were two. That doesn’t make her your sister.”

“Okay, wait,” Loki cuts in. “Rewind, please. Dad was married to a woman before he met you and this woman had a daughter that isn’t _his_ biological daughter but that is _my_ biological mother?”

“Yes,” sighs Frigga and, spoken out loud, the words sound even more ridiculous. “I know it’s a lot—”

“How in God’s name did it happen that _you_ raised me, then?” Loki cuts in. “What kind of sick arrangement is this? And how come she never showed her face until now? I am almost sixteen! Where was she all this time?”

“I don’t know,” Frigga mumbles, debating with herself whether she should be entirely honest for a moment because she doesn’t want to hurt him by telling him the whole truth while simultaneously sensing that he won’t ever have a chance to heal if she continues to keep said truth from him. “Hela didn’t say what she wanted. She just said she wanted to speak to you to ask you something but when I asked her what that something was, she told me it was none of my business.”

“Hey, maybe she was just released from prison after serving fifteen years for murder. The timing adds up,” Thor half-jokes, half-speculates because even though the thought that just popped into his mind out of nowhere appears to be ridiculous at first, it’s actually not abnormally ridiculous considering what happened. If Hela had it in her to risk letting her own baby die, she probably wouldn’t have scruples to harm a grown person.

“Come on,” sighs Frigga, suddenly annoyed by her son’s deflecting humor she usually appreciates. “Your father would have heard about that.”

“That doesn’t implicate that he would’ve told you about it though, does it?” Loki asks back, a grim smile on his lips and the truth in his words drive a knife into Frigga’s chest.

“How did I end up here, mother?” Loki demands again and Thor leans back in his chair, eagerly waiting for Frigga’s response to see if his parents’ stories match up. “And why did she find the bruises on my face so interesting?”

“Hela comes from an abusive household,” Frigga begins. “Apparently, her mother, her name is Angie, was in a series of abusive relationships before she met Odin and the man she dated after they got divorced was no exception. Hela showed up here, ringing our doorbell one evening when she was about fourteen years old. She was … badly beaten.”

Thor listens intently, straining to catch the slightest inconsistency, but his mother recounts the events leading up to Odin throwing Hela out on her ass in pretty much the exact same way his father did the day before; even if she does it with a lot more compassion.

“And then what?” Loki asks.

“She, uh, got in trouble with the law and was sentenced to juvenile detention for a few months,” Frigga says and her heart still aches for the young girl that Hela once was and that Odin rejected all those years ago to protect a two-year-old Thor from her ‘bad influence’. “We never heard from her again until she … she …”

“Yes?” Loki prompts her, his voice so cold and so detached that Thor instinctively knows that whoever is speaking right now can’t be his little brother even though he can still _see_ his little brother in Loki’s eyes and, _fuck_ , _fuck_ , _fuck_ , why does this family have to be _so_ incredibly messed up?

“She came from an abusive household,” repeats Frigga. “She was … She ended up on the streets after she was released from prison and then she got pregnant and she … She was too young to raise a baby, so she brought you here.”

“ _Brought_ me here?” Loki-who-isn’t-quite-Loki echoes.

“Well, she left you here,” Frigga concedes and another weight is being lifted from her chest as if some invisible celestial being just reached into her corporeal form. “She left you on our doorstep in a blanket with a note and—”

“She left me here?” Loki repeats. “On the doorstep? Wrapped up in a fucking blanket? With nothing but a fucking _note_?!”

Frigga fights the tears stinging her eyes when she recalls that day. “Yes,” she confirms, leaving out the part where he almost died because she is too scared to address this without a professional psychological present. “And I know that this is probably a lot to process but—”

“And then what?” Loki cuts in. “You kept me? Just like that?”

“Yes,” replies Frigga because despite the torturous moments that she had to live through that day and despite the lie that she told the nurses and doctors, in the end, it truly is as simple as that. She just kept him because—

Loki doesn’t seem convinced at all. “Why?”

“Because you were a baby that sorely needed the love of a mother,” says Frigga and Thor’s heart almost breaks in his chest when he recalls the family photos of his own birth. The photos of Frigga cradling his tiny infant body to her chest in her hospital bed, her face all flushed and clammy, her sweaty hair plastered to her head after laboriously giving birth. And it hurts like hell to think that Loki never had that. That Loki had to experience coldness where Thor got to experience warmth and love and protective arms pressing him close to his mother’s heart and, _holy shit_ , it makes so much sense that Loki always cried when Frigga left a room because he was probably scared he’d lose that love again but, then again, what doesn’t make sense is that he never got suspicious of the fact there were no photos of him in a hospital in Frigga’s arms because Loki is so fucking smart but, _then again_ , maybe he just blocked it out like he blocks out so many other things and, _holy_ _fucking shit_ , why does everyone always end up abandoning him like Thor did when he moved the fuck out without even thinking about what it might—

“Which is why we took you in and raised you,” Frigga continues, tearing Thor away from his thoughts. “And we thought, well, _I_ thought, Hela would come back one day because she regretted her decision and wanted to see you but time passed and you grew into a child and I … I considered telling you the truth but I thought … I was afraid that it’d do more damage than necessary and I … I just waited but she never came back and, at some point, I figured she wouldn’t ever come back, so I thought to myself, ‘Why tell you something that was unnecessarily going to upset you?’ You are my son, Loki. And I am your mother. Her showing up here now out of nowhere doesn’t change that. You’re ours. This here is your family.”

“What did the note say?” Loki asks in a trembling voice, which makes Thor oblivious to his brother’s emotional state for a second as he questions his own sanity in earnest because it didn’t even occur to him to wonder about the exact wording of Hela’s message when his Dad told him about it the previous day.

Frigga inhales a deep breath. “ _This is your fault_. _I hope you enjoy your gift_. _Hela_.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Thor blurts out.

“I have no idea,” Frigga mumbles because she has puzzled over those words for over a decade and she still has no clue what a sixteen-year-old drugged Hela could have meant by ‘gift’ when she must have realized that the baby she left was as good as dead. Or maybe she didn’t realize it _because_ she was high but, then again, the note wasn’t written by someone who was so high that their vision was already blurry because it was written in neat letters and not some intoxicated scrawl and—

“Hey,” mumbles Thor when he realizes that Loki is starting to hyperventilate, trying to pull his little brother into a side-hug. “It’s okay.”

“ _Stop saying that_! I told you that nothing is _okay_!” Loki screams as he jerks away from Thor and springs to his feet like a scalded cat, his outburst finally giving Frigga the boost she needs to propel her into action. “How can you even say that with your whole damn chest? How can you fucking say that when I … When this … When …”

“Loki, please, I know you’re upset,” Frigga says as she walks towards him, trying to reach out to him. “I know this is a lot to take in for you—”

“My whole existence a lie and all you can say is, ‘I know this is a lot to take in for you?’ _Seriously_? That’s all you got for me?” Loki screeches, slapping her hand away and Thor jolts to his feet, wondering why he always ends up saying the wrong thing when Loki is upset and always ends up upsetting him even more when all he wants is to comfort him as he did when they were younger. Wondering why it doesn’t work anymore, why Loki doesn’t believe him anymore, why he can’t calm him down anymore, and refusing to believe that things can never go back to how they once were.

“Your existence is _not_ a lie because my love for you is not a lie,” Frigga tries, reaching for her son’s hands again, squeezing them before he has a chance to slip away again and Loki starts panting, his whole body trembling, his green eyes shimmering with tears. “You’re my son and I love you. I love you more than I could ever express with words.”

“And you’re my brother,” Thor adds as he gently drapes his arm across Loki’s neck, squeezing his right—his good—shoulder. “We grew up as brothers and that’s not a lie. Fuck, I accidentally discovered the truth two days ago and I never once _not_ thought of you as my brother during the time that passed since then.”

Loki draws in a sharp breath. “But …”

“There’s no but. We love you,” says Thor even though there is, isn’t there, _oh yes_ , there’s a huge fucking but and it’s walking through the door separating the house from the garage at this very moment. Frigga’s heart almost stops dead in her chest when she feels her husband’s presence in the hallway and she turns around to look at him, Loki’s hands still clutched in hers.

“What are _you_ doing here so early?” Frigga gasps.

“I could ask you the same question,” Odin retorts, his face a cold, hard grimace of suspicion. “I thought Loki was in the hospital.” He strides towards them, looking at his adoptive son. “Are you alright, boy?”

Loki gives a nod but it isn’t a very convincing one.

“Did _you_ beat him up like that, giving him a black eye?!” Odin bellows at Thor as if he wouldn’t have done the same damage if Thor hadn’t intercepted his punch six days ago.

“I already told you that,” Thor grumbles.

“Shame on you,” Odin growls, violently smacking the back of his head.

“Ow,” Thor winces and, even though Frigga admonishes her husband by hissing his name, he knows deep inside his heart that he deserves it. That doesn’t help with his anger though and he takes a step forward anyway, violently shoving his Dad away.

Odin glowers at Thor, his eyes narrowing to slits.

Thor glowers back. “You started it.”

“Will you two _stop_ it?” Frigga snaps as Loki takes a step backwards. Alarmed by the suddenly erupting tension, his body begins to shake even more but Frigga does not immediately notice it because she is busy glaring at her husband. “When will you ever learn that punishing violence with violence is fruitless?”

“What violence?” Odin blares. “You seriously call this _violence_?”

“You can’t just,” Frigga begins but stops dead in her tracks when her youngest audibly chokes on a sob. They all turn around at once, gazing at Loki, who’s standing in the middle of the dining room area, wrapping his arms around himself, his body shaking, his lips quivering.

“What the hell is going on here?” Odin demands, taking a step towards Loki after his eyes grazed the decanter of scotch and the empty glass on the dining room table. “Have you been drinking again?”

“No,” pants Loki and then fresh tears well into his eyes, and Odin’s mouth gapes open in exasperation. “Why are you crying?”

Loki only shakes his head, jerking away from Frigga when she tries to touch him. Odin turns away, looking what can only be described as disgusted. “Gosh, I can’t wait for the day I won’t have to walk straight into one of your meltdowns whenever I set foot in this house,” he sighs under his breath.

“You really are the worst kind of self-absorbed asshole,” Thor snaps at his father as a sob tears from Loki’s chest.

“You’d better watch your mouth, boy,” Odin hisses but Thor couldn’t care less about his father’s threats because Loki stumbles over to the couch and drops himself onto it and curls up into a ball, seized by another hysterical and mostly tearless screaming-crying fit. Thor charges after him at once and Frigga wants to do the same but Odin reaches for her wrist and holds her back, grabbing her arm so violently that she gives a yelp of pain. “What’s going on here?”

“Let go of me,” demands Frigga.

“Not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”

“You let go _now_ ,” Frigga warns him. “You’re hurting me.”

Odin releases her, pulling back his hands with a contrite expression stamped across his face. “I’m sorry. I … I didn’t mean to.”

“You never do,” Frigga reprimands him in a soft growl as Thor drops down next to his brother and awkwardly pulls him onto his lap. “But, just so you know, I told him the truth. About the adoption.”

Odin narrows his eyes at her. “What?”

“I told him the truth,” Frigga repeats, her eyes on Thor who is cradling Loki close, trying to shush him with no real success. “Thor told me you knew that Hela was in town and, guess what, she came here and Loki saw her and he asked who she was afterwards and I just … I couldn’t lie anymore, so I told him.”

“You told him,” Odin repeats, his gaze on Loki screaming like a newborn in Thor’s arms. “And how do you feel about that?”

“Better before you came here actually,” Frigga retorts, realizing with no small amount of terror that she’s actually mentally preparing herself for a blow to the face. She huffs a laugh when Odin’s face falls. “We were just about to get through to him before you set him off by continuing to disrespect him,” she whispers before she finalizes the terms of their break. “What you said about being tired of his ‘meltdowns’ is what sent him over the edge just now and if you don’t find it in yourself to treat him as your son now that it matters than ever before, I’ll file for divorce and take my son to an environment where he isn’t constantly belittled, do you hear me? You’ve got to choose whether you still want this family or not!”

That said, Frigga walks to the couch where Thor is trying to comfort Loki and she wraps her arms around his neck from behind, kissing the top of his head, trying to comfort him because Odin isn’t the only one who has tons of things to make up for in the belittling their sons’ feelings department. “I love you, Thor. I love you so much and, even though I know I shouldn’t have ever placed this burden on you in the first place, I’m so glad you’re here. You’re a wonderful person and I am so, so proud of you.”

“I know, I listened to your voice message,” whispers Thor and he means it because, even if Loki keeps on screaming and even if everything else is just beyond fucked up right now, there’s this certainty at least. Their Mom loves them so, so much. She loves them both with her whole fucking heart and that has to count for something, thinks Thor as he presses Loki’s screaming, trembling body closer to his chest. “And I love you too, Mom.”

“I’m going to get him a sedative,” Frigga mumbles, reluctantly letting go of Thor.

Odin sits down on the couch beside Thor and Loki as Frigga jogs up the stairs to fetch the pills and, looking extremely uncomfortable, Odin stretches out his arm to place it on Loki’s back. “I am sorry, son,” he mumbles. “Work has me a little on edge. I didn’t mean what I said, you hear me? Everything is okay.”

Loki cries out again, burrowing deeper into Thor’s belly.

“I don’t know what I … Does he even hear what I’m saying?” Odin searches for Thor’s gaze. “And what are _you_ even doing here? I thought you had a game?”

“I do,” says Thor, “but, apart from the fact that my plane doesn’t leave until seven, that game isn’t important right now.”

“This season might decide—”

“Stop it, Dad,” Thor cuts in. “Gosh, just stop it. I don’t _care_ , okay?”

“You should,” says Odin.

“I should but I don’t,” Thor replies and an uncomfortable silence creeps over them.

“Here, honey,” whispers Frigga as she comes back with a glass of water and two pills of the herbal sedative that calmed him down after his breakdown in school the previous week. She carefully touches Loki’s shoulder, trying to pull him up. “I want you to drink this.”

“Noooo!” Loki shakes his head and starts screeching in earnest then, his arms flailing and knocking the glass out of her hands as she tries to bring it to his lips and sending it to the floor where it shatters into a thousand pieces, the clear liquid spilling all over the floor tiles.

“And what now?” asks Odin.

“I don’t know,” whispers Frigga as she sits down next to Thor who is tirelessly trying to shush Loki, rubbing Thor’s back with her right hand and carefully reaching for Loki with her left, scared to upset him again. “I guess there’s nothing we can do except for letting him weep himself out.”

Odin nods grimly and then he stands up, walks over to his liquor cabinet to retrieve a new glass, which he takes to the dining room table to pour himself a generous drink, and Thor’s hangover is still going so strong that the mere thought of a drop of scotch on his tongue is enough to turn his stomach upside down. “So, why did Hela come here?” asks Odin. “What did she want after all this time?”

“I don’t know,” Frigga replies before she walks over to him and recounts what happened once more for her husband. “She said she’d be back on Sunday afternoon though and I swear to God, if you aren’t here when she pays us another visit, I will—”

“Oh because adopting Hela’s child was _my_ idea,” Odin scoffs. “That makes total sense.”

“If you hadn’t treated her the way you did—”

“Would you _mind_ taking your marriage quarrels elsewhere?” Thor cuts in, baffled by his parents’ blatant lack of tact.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Frigga concedes and, despite the severity of Loki’s emotional distress and the hopelessness of the entire situation, she feels a flicker of pride blaze up inside of her at how grown-up Thor acts most of the time these days.

“Why don’t you, uh, try to sing a song to him or something?” comes an entirely unforeseen suggestion from Odin, who is sipping his drink by the dining room table. “Like that stupid Norwegian song about the sleeping bear that he liked as a boy?”

 _I’ll be fucking damned_ , thinks Thor, asking himself why his emotionally unavailable father thought of that when he and Frigga didn’t but, _then again_ **_again_** , even a broken clock is still right twice a day, isn’t it?

“Bjørnen sover, bjørnen sover,” Frigga begins softly as she walks back to the couch and Thor joins in even though he isn’t entirely sure about the lyrics anymore because his command of their parents’ first language is rather pitiful. 

“I sitt lune hi. Den er ikke farlig, bare vi går varlig,” Frigga leads and Loki perks up his ears, his sobs quietening to a soft whimper. “Men man kan jo, men man kan jo, aldri være _trygg_.”

At last, Loki’s whimpering ceases entirely but they repeat the song once more anyway, just to be on the safe side. When they finish the second time, Loki untangles himself from Thor’s embrace with a soft smile on his face but, _holy fucking shit_ , _oh please no_ , even before he starts speaking, Thor instantly knows they triggered him in the wrong way because his eyes suddenly look so much bigger than they usually do. Bigger and so much more innocent. Loki reaches for Thor’s right hand before Thor can let go of Loki entirely and takes it in both of his before he softly brushes over Thor’s knuckles and fingers with his fingertips.

“W-what are you doing?” asks Thor because being touched by his brother like that feels a tiiiiny liiiittle bit weird. 

“Your hands are so big,” Loki says in his baby brother voice. “Why are your hands so big?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translated to English, the song lyrics mean something like:
> 
> The bear is sleeping,  
> The bear is sleeping  
> In its cozy den.  
> It is not dangerous  
> If we just go carefully  
> But then one can,  
> But then one can  
> Never be quite sure!
> 
> It's actually a game where kids move in a circle around a child pretending to be a sleeping bear and then, at the last word, the sleeping bear jumps to their feet and tags the next kid.
> 
> And yes, Frigga told him almost everything. That probably wasn't the smartest move but, first of all, I guess at some point you just can't lie anymore and, second, she was afraid that Hela would let the cat out of the bag and she figured it'd be better if Loki heard the truth from her.
> 
> And yes, Odin is still making things worse whenever he makes an entrance but what did we expect? I mean, honestly?! 
> 
> That said, here's to some *coughs* quality family time ahead!! Stay tuned x


	28. One tiny step at a time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family has to face up to a new kind of challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this was actually much, much longer when I first came up with everything that could happen with Loki being in that state. I actually ran a poll on Twitter, asking whether y'all want this in all its angsty, whumpy detail even if it doesn't contribute much to the plot or if you'd want the actual story to continue. 43% voted for plotless angst, 57% voted for the story. I think I found a compromise in which I tell some of it because it's important for what happened and what's to come, have some of it in descriptive sort of flashbacks and just left out the rest. Maybe I'll make a deleted scenes for this one as I did for Beyond Mischief on fanfiction.net. Who knows? It's all in my head and it's safe there; which is to say I can still write it out later.
> 
> Oh, and the last chapter was switching between Frigga's and Thor's POV, which I didn't quite realize until Akira pointed it out to me. I never did that sort of thing before telling the morning in the cabin bathroom from Loki's and Thor's combined POV and I guess I just found it actually works? But anyway, I tried to seperate the POVs again for this one to make it clearer.
> 
> But enough talk. Please, enjoy the angst and the fluff and everything in between.

**_Friday, September 27 th, 2019  
  
_ ** **_  
53 hours to the incident_ **

  
When she first hears Loki speak in his toddler voice again, a chill creeps down Frigga’s spine because, even if she doesn’t fully comprehend her son’s mental disorder, having mulled over Dr. van Dyne’s words while she was keeping watch at Loki’s hospital bed at least gave her some basic understanding of how his mind works. And, unfortunately, his mind works in such a way that it sort of disconnects his consciousness from the outside world whenever he can’t deal with the reality outside of his mind. Which is exactly what is happening once more right now because, just as her husband predicted, he is emotionally incapable to handle the truth she revealed to him.

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Thor, who recovers from the initial shock written all over his face enviably quickly. “Maybe so I can do _this_?” He breaks free of Loki’s grip and begins to tickle his sides, to which Loki squeals in delight.

The sound of Loki’s giggly laughter echoes through the room and fills Frigga’s aching heart with a joy she never thought she’d feel anymore. Odin returns to the couch, his incredulous gaze traveling from his wife to his sons and back to his wife. “What the hell is happening now?” he gasps and the confusion in his eyes softens Frigga up a little because, despite everything, there is a faint spark of concern behind her husband’s irritation and, all be damned, they’re still somehow in this together, aren’t they?

“I’m not really sure,” she replies. “I don’t … fully understand it myself.”

“Thor has really big hands,” Loki tells his father in between giggles.

“So do you,” Odin replies in a voice that seems to have lost at least a tiny bit of its usual gruffness due to his amazement. He knocks back his drink and puts the empty glass on the table, suspiciously eying Loki who is staring at his own hands with utter confusion. “And that’s hardly surprising considering that you’re both fully grown or almost fully grown men, is it?”

“Odin,” Frigga admonishes him. _So much for his apparent concern_.

“What?” Odin barks at her before he refocuses his attention on Loki. “Look, I understand that you’re upset about finding out you’re adopted but there’s no need to act like a goddamn child! You’re making yourself look ridiculous.”

Loki swallows.

“Remember the talk you promised me yesterday, Dad?” Thor chimes in before Frigga has a chance to think of an impactful answer. He jerks his head in the direction of the hallway. “It seems we both have a bit of time to spare right now, so let’s talk.”

“Alright,” Odin sighs with the maximum amount of displeasure anyone can possibly squeeze into a single word.

“And we are going to get you out of that bathrobe and put some clothes on you,” Frigga announces, stretching out her hand towards Loki, who insists that he can dress by himself with a pout. “I’m sure you can but you’re not supposed to raise your arms above your head, remember? Come on, I’ll help you and after that, I’m going to make lunch.” She flashes him an encouraging smile, shoving away the realization that he probably won’t remember because this version of Loki wasn’t present when she told him about his injuries. “You can start thinking about what I—”

“Spaghetti with meatballs!” Loki exclaims.

“Spaghetti with meatballs,” Odin repeats under his breath as he turns away. “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.”

Thor’s lips break into a sheepish grin. “I second that, bro.”

* * *

Raising children is a different challenge at every age of their development. Caring for an infant is nerve-stretching because you can’t communicate with your offspring and never know if you are satisfying the exact needs that need to be satisfied whenever a baby is crying. Caring for a toddler is exhausting because they never sit still and constantly babble, running everywhere, touching everything; never giving you a minute’s rest until they collapse into their beds at night. Caring for a child can be exasperating when they begin to test their limits and develop their own will. And caring for a teenager can be the worst roller coaster of emotion because everything potentially feels like the end of the world when hormones are out of whack. But caring for a teenager torn up by existential dread one second and then walking up the stairs like a toddler on wobbly legs the next, all knowledge of how to set one foot in front of the other without almost stumbling over them seemingly forgotten, poses by far the hardest challenge Frigga ever had to rise to during parenthood.

Afraid he’ll topple over if she just lets him walk, she reaches for Loki’s elbow, supporting him as he pads up the stairs, and that isn’t something that Dr. van Dyne’s tentative assessments up to now could have _ever_ prepared her for. But there’s no use dwelling on it now, is there? She’ll get through this day the same way she got through previous days like this. Hour by hour, one tiny step at a time.

She leads Loki into his room and to his wardrobe, opening it. “Alright, pick something.”

Loki eyes her with no small amount of suspicion before he inspects his clothes, his face scrunching up in aversion.

“What?”

“I want something not black,” murmurs Loki. “Why is everything black?”

“I’ve asked myself the same question many times, believe me,” Frigga sighs as Loki drops to his knees and opens one of the drawers, pulling out a pair of pink fluffy socks she never saw him wear before. He begins to pull out more clothes after that, dumping them all on the floor. “Loki, please. Can’t you just … Hey, what about this?” She fishes a pair of gray pajama pants with pumpkins and black cats on it out of the pile, holding it out to him.

Loki nods and she pulls out a simple black hooded sweater from the wardrobe rail to go with it. “Will that be okay too?”

Loki glares at her as if she lost her mind. “Mommy, this one is _black_ too.”

“I know it is but it’s still a really nice sweater. Plus, it’ll keep you warm,” Frigga tries, astonished how effortlessly she switches back to the high pitch of child-directed speech as if no time has passed at all. “You need to keep warm, okay?”

He still looks unconvinced and she holds it out to him so that he can feel the fabric on the inside. “It’s fluffy.”

The sweater’s fluffiness seems to be a knock-down argument and once he agrees, Frigga helps him into his clothes with astonishingly little protest coming from him. When Loki is fully dressed, he gets up again and starts inspecting his shelves, pulling out a jigsaw puzzle of an African landscape. He eyes it for a moment before he removes the lid of the box so forcefully that it slips from his hands, the pieces spilling onto the floor. Frigga swallows, the surreal experience rooting her to the spot. Loki drops onto his knees, props up the lid with the puzzle’s reference picture on it against the shelf and begins rummaging through the pile. He quickly singles out two, five, seven edge pieces from the pile, carefully placing them aside.

Frigga clears her throat, thinking of how he wobbled up the stairs earlier. “Look, why don’t you come back down with me, honey? You can do the puzzle downstairs.”

Loki shakes his head before he indignantly glances up at her. “But I already started,” he argues with utter conviction.

“Yeah, I can see that.” Frigga draws in a sharp breath but then she hears Thor stomping up the stairs. He flashes her a fake grin when he enters Loki’s room. “So, how’s that lunch coming along, Mom?”

“I thought you and your father wanted to talk?”

“Yeah,” Thor breathes out his frustration. “But then his phone rang before I could even finish explaining. Anyway, I’m kinda starving.”

Frigga heaves a sigh in response to both her husband’s priorities and her son’s unspoken directive. Thor is easing into adulthood alright, except when it comes to the obsolete belief that, as his mother, she is solely responsible for his nourishment whenever she is around and, not for the first time, she imagines the conversation he’s inevitably going to have with the first woman moving in with him about who should be cooking and why. “I’m pretty sure I’ll have to head to the grocery store real quick before I can get started.”

“No problem,” says Thor. “I’ll watch him.”

Her eyes on Loki, Frigga ushers her eldest back outside, leaving the door ajar. “Loki, uh, he was like this when you stayed at the cabin, right?” she whispers.

Thor gives a slow nod. “Yeah.”

“What did you … I mean, how did you … What did you _do_?” asks Frigga because, even though it feels natural to talk to him as she did when he was a child on some level, the entire situation remains so very disconcerting to say the least.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure, I mean, I don’t know how we’re supposed to ... act around him, you know.”

“And you think _I_ do?” Thor chuckles desperately. “All I did was just … roll with it, Mom. If you wanna know more, you should call his shrink.” He harrumphs. “Therapist.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. I, uh, I’ll be back soon.” She leans forward and kisses his cheek. “Thank you.”

* * *

Thor can sense how badly Frigga is beating herself up about assigning another babysitting task to him, her guilty conscience seemingly lingering in the upstairs hallway even after she walked down the stairs. He wonders whether she’d still feel this bad if she knew that a tiny part of him offered to watch Loki because he is aching to finish the conversation he and the toddler version of his brother began in the cabin.

Loki is lying on his stomach on the floor, his fingers rifling through a pile of puzzle pieces, his feet rapidly moving back and forth in the air as he continues to pull out edge pieces out of the huge ass pile with a speed that seems to contradict his mental age.

“Loki?” Thor hates to disturb his moment of peace but he doesn’t know how long this Loki will stay, so he crosses his legs and sits down beside him, softly asking why Loki didn’t tell him that he was hurt in the car or the cabin. “You must’ve been in pain.”

Loki tears his gaze away from the puzzle and shyly glances up at him. Thor’s heart gives a lurch because seeing his brother so vulnerable after he acted like this conceited, spiteful smartass jerk for the past months is something he can’t quite get used to. “You have to tell people when you’re hurt, okay?”

Loki thinks this over for a second. “Why?”

“Because,” Thor begins, unsure how to even address the subject but now that he started, there’s no going back. “You see, sometimes people hurt you without meaning to and they don’t actually know that they hurt you and if you don’t tell them, they keep on hurting you and I don’t want to see my little brother get hurt, okay? Not by me or anyone else. So, if someone ever hurts you again, you’ve got to tell them, so that they can be more careful the next time, alright?”

Loki doesn’t look convinced at all even if Thor tried his best to make his words understandable for someone who apparently has the brainpower of a small child at the moment. “Do you understand?”

Loki shrugs.

“You don’t deserve to get hurt,” Thor continues, cupping his brother’s unbruised cheek in his left hand. “I want you to know that, okay?”

“Okay,” says Loki.

“Which is why you can tell us who hurt you. Before, I mean. In this house.” Thor draws a deep breath but Loki doesn’t seem to be troubled at all, which Thor takes as a good sign because it doesn’t occur to him that there could be different child versions of Loki who have different ages and remember different things. “They have to be held accountable for hurting you. Besides, if you’re not telling us who did that to you, they might hurt someone else out there. You don’t want anyone else to get hurt, do you?” asks Thor, softly stroking his brother’s cheek.

Loki softly shakes his head. “Uh-uh.”

“You don’t have to tell me right away but I want you to think about it, okay? Whatever happened, it happened a long time ago and that person is no longer here to hurt you. You’re safe and you can trust us. We’re your family and we’re gonna look out for you,” says Thor, pulling him into another hug because he can’t help himself. He just wants to make it all go away and give his brother all the love he has been deprived of in the past when he thought people were about to leave him or didn’t care about him. “I want you to know that. Now more than ever.”

“Okay,” Loki whispers against Thor’s shirt.

“Okay,” says Thor, pressing him close for a while before releasing him. He glances at the pile of puzzle pieces. “You want some help with that?”

Loki shakes his head. “You suck at puzzles.”

“Ouch,” Thor grumbles in mock-offended. “I might have gotten better at puzzles since we were little. Ever thought of that?”

Loki shakes his head again and he’s so focused that Thor just contends himself with leaning against the bed and watching him.

* * *

“Lunch is ready!” Frigga shouts from the bottom of the stairs, hoping that Odin will remain holed up in his office after expressing his disapproval of Loki’s lunch request because if Loki can’t dress himself, he probably won’t be able to eat by himself and she dreads her husband’s reaction to that. But, of course, instead of cutting himself off from the family life as he usually does, he stomps out of his office on this of all days to join them at the table.

 _Marvelous_.

“You really made a children’s meal, huh?” Odin remarks as he slides on a chair without making a move to help her with anything.

“Nobody’s forcing you to eat it,” Frigga snaps as Loki and Thor come down the stairs. “And if I hear even one scornful comment coming out of your mouth, so help me God, I’ll dump the whole pot onto your head.”

“Jesus,” Odin sighs amusedly. “Early retirement doesn’t agree with you at all, does it?”

Frigga inhales sharply but refrains from a retort because Loki has reached the table, awkwardly climbing on one of the chairs opposite his father. Thor flops down next to him, informing her with no small amount of astonishment that Loki has already finished all four edges of his puzzle.

“Really?” Frigga asks as she begins to heap pasta onto Thor’s plate, silently wondering how Loki can have enough brainpower to solve a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle but not enough to dress himself. But then again, as Dr. van Dyne said, very little about severe trauma actually makes sense.

“I’m good at puzzles,” insists Loki, shooting Thor a glance as if his brother insulted him.

When she sits down to eat, Frigga realizes that her birthday in July was the last time all four of them sat on a table together and, despite the circumstances leading to that moment and despite the fact that Odin’s presence unnerves her, she appreciates the family time she has been given. Until she lifts her gaze and sees Loki struggling with the cutlery as she dreaded he would.

“Look,” says Thor, demonstrating the art of eating spaghetti with his own spoon and fork. “It’s easy.”

Loki gives it a try but ends up sticking both his spoon and his fork into the pile on his plate and lifting up a small mountain of spaghetti close to his face as he bends down, shoving it into his mouth and instantly covering his chin and cheeks in sauce. Odin draws in a sharp breath but keeps his mouth shut and Thor is probably too busy shoveling food into his mouth to comment because his muscles devour calories at the speed of lightning at any given time.

“And that’s why you’re wearing black,” Frigga sighs, unable to tell whether she should laugh or cry because this _shouldn’t_ be happening and it probably wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t triggered him with that foolish song. “I’m going to get a knife.”

Odin stares at her as he munches away on the oh-so-dreadful children meal, his face unreadable as she cuts up Loki’s spaghetti into tiny pieces to facilitate his eating process. “There. Now you can use the spoon.”

Not that this makes it significantly easier but at least he manages by himself and the room falls silent as they all dig in. It’s the quietest meal they ever shared and the silence bears testimony to how utterly overwhelmed they all are by what is happening. Loki, thankfully, remains entirely unbothered by the tension, though. He eats his pasta and then he wordlessly stands up, half his food still on his plate, heading for the stairs.

“Hey, where are you going?” shouts Frigga.

“Back to my puzzle.”

“No, wait, honey! We’ve got to clean you up first,” Frigga sighs. All be damned, after all this time she entirely forgot just how draining having small children is. Not that having a teenager is anywhere near easy on the psyche but at least teenagers can clothe, feed and clean up after themselves.

“I got it, Mom,” says Thor as he refills his plate with a huge portion before he gets up and hurries after his brother. “Just relax a bit, okay?”

“Not a word,” Frigga hisses when Odin draws a breath to speak. “He isn’t faking this. Why would he? That makes no sense.”

“Well, it does if you take into account how it’s giving him Thor’s undivided attention. Which is what he wants, isn’t it?”

“Do you even _know_ him?” Frigga inhales a trembling breath, tears stinging her eyes when she realizes with a sudden, overwhelming clarity that all her talk about taking a break or filing for divorce if he doesn’t change his ways is obsolete because he is no longer the man she fell in love with. Because he won’t change and he won’t ever treat Loki and Thor as equals and because she doesn’t even freaking _love_ him anymore. “Loki would _never_ voluntarily expose himself like that. Where have you been these past months? How can you—”

“Alright, alright,” Odin cuts her off, backpedaling when he sees her pained expression. “You’re probably right. It’s just … I don’t want Thor to throw his future away. The way it looks right now, he won’t leave for Wyoming and—”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Frigga asks as she slams her hand on the table. “You let him stew in the belief that you don’t care about his career for almost a year! What makes you think you get to pressure him about football like this _now_?”

The tightness returns to her chest as she speaks and she tries to draw a deep breath. “I … I need some air,” Frigga mumbles and then she springs to her feet, fleeing the house, leaving Odin to himself.

* * *

“Look, I’ve got to leave soon,” announces Thor after having spent two hours trying to get his head back into the game through playing a football game on his Xbox in Loki’s room while his brother assembled an actual third of his puzzle. “I have a game tomorrow.”

Loki nods without taking his eyes off the task in front of him.

“Is that okay if I go or do you want me to stay?” 

“Of course I want you to stay but you can still go,” Loki informs him. “Because it’s important, isn’t it?”

“It is but you are more important and I won’t leave if you need me here,” says Thor because he won’t give Nikias or anyone else reason to doubt that he cares about his little brother ever again; even if Tony Stark would probably spill his scotch in terror if he could see him right now. “Because I’ll be gone until tomorrow night and I—”

“I’m gonna be okay.” Loki looks up at him with a soft smile and stretches out his little finger. “Pinky swear.”

“Oh, pinky swear,” Thor says almost solemnly, wondering when they last did that. Years ago probably. It’s such a little gesture but it gives him peace and it gives him hope that, someday, maybe, things are finally going to be okay-ish again.

“Alright. I’ll put my number back into your phone. If you need anything, just call me or text me, okay?” Thor asks as he ruffles through his hair.

“Uh-huh,” replies Loki but his attention is already on the puzzle again.

* * *

That night, Frigga feels every single one of her fifty-two years in her bones when she collapses into bed after arguing with her husband about pretty much everything as soon as the door clicked shut behind Thor and, even more so, after having to coerce Loki into getting ready for bed. She entirely forgot just how nerve-racking and time-consuming the whole process from the first “I think it’s time for bed” to the final act of switching off the light can be. Not to mention the joys of brushing someone else’s teeth. Someone who constantly tries to jerk his head away. She drifts off into an uneasy sleep as soon as her face touches the pillow, hoping with her last conscious thoughts that Loki will wake up as a teenager in the morning.

His screams that wake her up around three thirty in the morning shatter that hope instantly.

“Mamaaaaaa!” 

Frigga is out of bed and in his room in an instant but finds his bed is empty. Her sleep-muddled mind needs a moment to realize that the screams are coming from the other end of the hallway. Loki is stumbling out of the master bedroom when she arrives and he is panting heavily, crocodile tears running down his cheeks. “Mamaaaa!” 

“What in God’s name is going on now?” Odin mutters drowsily as he comes out after their son.

“I d-don’t know,” Frigga stammers as Loki storms towards her and throws himself into her arms, sobbing, “Mama, Mama, Mama,” clinging to her as though he would dissolve if he let go, which she doesn’t really understand since he seemed perfectly calm and didn’t even ask her to stay when she tucked him in and kissed him goodnight.

“Shshshh, I am here, honey. It’s okay. I’m right here,” Frigga whispers, glancing up at Odin. “What did he want in our room?”

“I-I don’t know. I just woke up. I guess he was looking for you but since you decided to sleep in Thor’s room and weren’t there, he started panicking,” Odin grumbles, his tone leaving no doubt that he blames her for, well, everything. “I swear if this continues for much longer, I’ll lose my goddamn mind.” With that, he shuts the door behind him again, returning to his bed as if his crying son has absolutely nothing to do with him.

Frigga shakes her head and gently leads Loki back into his room, suddenly knowing deep inside her heart that she will divorce him.

“I can’t,” Loki says as she tries to usher him back into bed.

“Can’t what?”

Loki’s eyes flit to his bed and the large puddle in the middle of the mattress, which immediately catapults her into wakefulness. “Did you …” She gulps. “Don’t tell me you wet the bed?” 

Loki snivels and nods softly. 

_Holy hell_. Despite everything that happened and despite everything that Dr. van Dyne told her about regressive symptoms that can occur in response to psychological stress and trauma, Frigga didn’t anticipate _this_. She didn’t anticipate that she’d have to change sheets and blow-dry a mattress at four a.m. in the morning ever again. “Wait here."

Loki lets out another wail. 

“Oh come on, honey,” she snaps because her patience is starting to wear dangerously thin. “Just wait here, please. I’ll be right back. I’ll just get towels, okay?”

Astonishingly, he doesn’t tag after her even though he’s still whimpering quietly.

As soon as she returns to the room, she starts removing the sheets and tells him to put his clothes into the laundry basket next to his wardrobe. He complies, removing his clothing less clumsily than the day before and then he actually walks to his wardrobe and pulls out a new pajama as she starts to press the towels on the mattress to soak up the urine. Having to stop doing that when children reach a certain age is one of the things that actually make parenting a much more pleasant experience and having to do it again after some ten years makes her aware of how blissfully selective the human memory is.

But at least Loki manages to clothe himself this time, his sobbing finally ebbing away, and that’s something to be thankful for. Frigga throws the used towels and the soaked sheet into the laundry basket and draws herself up, her entire body aching with exhaustion. “We’ve got to let this dry. Come on, we’ll sleep in one of the guest bedrooms downstairs.”

Loki shakes his head.

“Why not?”

He shakes his head again and Frigga can almost feel the last drop of her patience evaporate. “If I start blow-drying your mattress at this hour, your father will lose his head. So, it’s either the guest bedroom or the couch or—”

“We sleep in Thor’s room,” Loki whispers.

“Fine,” Frigga agrees because she can hardly make a convincing argument against it when she slept in Thor’s bed earlier because she couldn’t stand the idea of hearing her husband breathe next to her. She ushers him into Thor’s bed and Loki starts draping himself around her like a human octopus before she has a chance to fully slip under the covers next to him. She switches off the light with a heavy heart and hugs him as close as she can without hurting his shoulder. “Good night, honey,” she whispers, silently praying that he will not lose control over his bladder again in his brother’s bed.

Loki is silent for a few beats and Frigga’s eyelids immediately get heavier and heavier and … “Mama?”

“Yes?” she sighs drowsily.

“Thor is gonna come back, right?”

“Of course and the sooner you sleep, the sooner he’ll be back. Now, good night.”

“But what if his plane crashes?” Loki asks and the urgency in his voice sends a shudder down her spine.

“That’s very unlikely, honey. Flying is actually really safe.”

“What if he gets run over by a car? That’s likely, isn’t it?”

A weight settles on her chest. “Honey, where is this coming from?”

Loki starts sobbing. “ _We_ almost got into an accident. It can happen.”

Suddenly, Frigga is fully awake again. “Loki, honey, do you remember what happened?”

“Uh-huh,” Loki wails.

Frigga tries to switch the light back on but he makes it impossible to move as much as an inch. “Please, tell me.”

“It’s all my fault,” Loki whimpers. “You can’t get mad at Thor, promise?”

“I’m not mad. I just … want to know what happened.”

Loki draws a shaky breath. “I took the keys because I wanted to go to the beach house like you said and Loki wanted to spend time with Thor like Thor said,” he wails and words can’t begin to describe the horror erupting in Frigga’s stomach when Loki starts talking about himself in the third person or, rather, when the Loki in her arms starts talking about Loki as if Loki was someone else _entirely_. “And then Nikias got mad at both of us because he doesn’t want us to spend time with Thor anymore and he tried to make Thor mad and then Thor got mad and he got rough too and Nikias wants us to think that Thor is bad but I pushed Nikias away because Thor isn’t bad. He didn’t want to be nasty and it’s Nikias’s fault that Thor never came anymore and I … I don’t want to lose Thor again. He must come back!”

“Hey, hey,” Frigga whispers as she cradles him close, baffled by what she just heard and failing to make sense of it in her exhausted state but finally realizing with more clarity than ever before just how utterly painful it must be for her son to carry all of these struggles inside of him and get through day after day. No wonder he’s been constantly exploding under all this pressure. No wonder he’s been drinking himself into oblivion and cutting himself to escape this … this chaos inside his head. “Your brother loves you, okay? He loves you so very, very much and you’re never gonna lose him, I promise you. He’ll be back.”

“Are you sure?” Loki— _Loki?_ —snivels.

“As sure as I can be.”

“Do you swear it on your life?”

“I do,” says Frigga because, yes, everything is beyond crazy right now but at least there is certainty in their love for one another and that gives her a tiny bit of hope. She presses Loki close, rubbing his back until he finally falls back asleep and, in the minutes before she sinks back into slumber herself, she feels oddly at peace, forgetting for a blissful moment whom she’ll have to face again in about thirty-five hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaw, look at child Loki giving them peace ♥♥ 
> 
> Apart from that though, this was still a pretty long chapter (probably one of the longest, if not THE longest to date), so please let me know if you found it to be dragging at times. 
> 
> I'm also curious whether you picked up on some contradictions/inconsisties/mysteries where Loki is concerned. 
> 
> Now, are y’all ready for Hela’s return??? 
> 
> PS: Yes, we're gonna fast forward to the day of the incident after this one with the rest of how the weekend went being told in flashbacks whenever necessary :)
> 
> PPS: I'm curious if you will instinctively know that I updated again this time, Estel.


	29. Love has to hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family reunion part II *coughs*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, we finally reached the day of the incident and, of course, that means we'll meet Hela again and I just wanna update a few trigger warnings here just in case:
> 
> tw substance/drug abuse  
> tw mention of past childhood/domestic abuse  
> tw mention of death (in a very gruesome way)
> 
> Please, stay safe everyone x

**_Sunday, September 29 th 2019_ **

**_  
  
168 minutes to the incident_ **

Thor walks out of the airport, his blood still boiling because the Rebels got their asses kicked real bad the previous night, which of course sent Coach Tyree into a frenzy, and even more so because their return flight after the game got canceled due to a storm brewing while they played. And if that hadn’t been bad enough, their scheduled early morning return got further delayed by an accident on the runway. The team has used the UNLV’s private plane to get to road games for the last two seasons and never once did anything like that happen but that’s so _fucking typical_ , isn’t it? Everything works according to plan if you have nothing to do on a Sunday after a game but if you actually need to get home ASAP, some higher power decides to throw a fit. It’s almost three thirty p.m. now and the way things have been going for him lately, Hela is probably already at the house because it’s Sunday afternoon right now but his phone’s battery died during the flight and he can’t call his Mom because he isn’t one of those weird people that have other people’s numbers memorized. _Fuck everything_. He used to be the luckiest kid in the whole ass world and, now, suddenly, nothing goes according to plan anymore and when did his life start to fuck him over like that? 

_Well_ , _scratch that_. 

He knows the answer to that very well, doesn’t he? Or maybe not because the events of the previous ten days have been set in motion before he was even born. Maybe there is some stupid ass thing like fate at work here. Maybe his life and that of his family was destined to fall apart at one point because of decisions that were made in the past.

 _Bullshit_ , Tony would say, raising his eyebrows at him as if he despised his stupidity on a cellular level. _Piping hot bullshit_. 

Maybe it is bullshit but it still sucks that his life turned against him after blessing him for two decades and even Tony fucking Stark couldn’t make him feel better about that. Thor brusquely dismisses his coach and teammates with a quick goodbye, mumbling something about a family emergency, strides to his car and speeds home. It’s only a seventeen-mile drive but it feels like forever, especially since traffic is really fucking horrible. _Of course it is_. Just like public transportation, traffic is never on your side when you’re in a goddamn hurry.

Thor spoke to Loki two times, the previous afternoon right before his game and once again this morning after breakfast, and his brother was still a child even though he acted and spoke differently than he did before Thor left for the airport on Friday. He actually talked more like cabin baby brother Loki than puzzle baby brother Loki and Thor begins to suspect that there could be a lot more versions living inside of him than he thought earlier. But that isn’t the problem right now. The problem is Hela. He hoped Loki would stay a child until he got back, so that he wouldn’t butt heads with their Dad (all too hard) and could actually smile for once but he also thought he’d be back before Hela arrived because if she meets the child version of his brother with only their parents present, it’ll end in disaster. 

Thor knows it. He just does and, _holy fuck_ , the first thing that catches his eye when he pulls into their street is her car. Well, he doesn’t know if it is _her_ car but it’s a car he never saw before—a rusty ass, dark green Celica with a California license plate that screams out of place in their neighborhood—and it’s parked almost directly in front of his parents’ house.

 _Fuck everything_.

Thor parks behind the beater and jerks the handbrake upwards with so much force that he is convinced he yanked it out of its mounting for a second. Not that he cares. He jumps out of his Tesla, which he’ll still have to take to the auto shop to get rid of the fucking dent at some point but he doesn’t really care about that either. He slams the door shut, grabs his bags out of the trunk and jogs inside.

“Helloooo?” Thor calls out, the pleasant smell of a cooking roast wafting into his nostrils. “Mom?”

Frigga appears at the other end of the hallway, a cooking spoon in her hands, her lips trembling as she whispers his name. She’s really making dinner. _The fuck_?

“Shit, don’t tell me I’m too late?” Thor gasps. He drops his bags in the middle of the hallway and crosses the distance between them in three large strides. As soon as he’s face to face with her, he can see that she is barely holding herself together and how could anyone expect her to hold herself the fuck together while she’s making dinner for the person who dropped a dying baby on her doorstep?

“No, I, it’s just,” Frigga whispers as she sweeps him into her arms. “Thank God you’re home.”

“What’s the matter, Mom?” Thor asks, alarmed by her distress. “Did Hela … Is she … What’s going on?”

“Nothing, it’s just … It’s stupid but …” She draws a deep breath and releases him. “Loki got so worried that you won’t return because of an accident or a plane crash and then you didn’t come home and I tried to call you and your phone … Never mind. Hela isn’t here yet.”

Her words take a load off his chest. “But her car … I mean, there’s a car parked out front. I thought it was hers. Gosh, I really thought I was gonna be late.”

Frigga forces a smile onto her lips. “Honey, even if you had been late, that would’ve been alright. You don’t have to be here for this. This is your father’s and my mess to clean up, not yours.”

“Yeah but you’re too overprotective when it comes to Loki and Dad is too underprotective, so I need to be the balancing element,” Thor repeats Tony’s words. “Or so I have been told. How is Loki? Is he still …?”

“Yes,” sighs Frigga. “He’s upstairs.”

* * *

Well, he is and he isn’t.

The child is still in control, well, mostly in control, but Loki is almost consciousnesses-converging kind of close, trying to push forward. She is drawing, drawing like a four-year-old would draw, but then, when Loki achieves control of the body’s hand, out comes a pencil drawing of a baby on the doorstep of the house. He can still feel his arm hurt like a bitch and he can’t properly use it to steady the paper, which means that the girl probably wasn’t very careful with his body after his mind exploded into complete and utter whiteness when Odin waltzed into the house but then, again, she is a toddler and it’s in their nature to be careless, isn’t it? Loki is close enough to feel her pain when she realizes what they’ve been drawing and he wonders if any of the children—because, yes, there is at least one other child, a boy, who can’t even properly walk yet—actually remember having been left in the cold.

He shudders and she tries to push him back out, making him wince, making him try harder.

 _See_? _That’s how it feels_.

Nikias. Of course the bastard is there too, following him like a shadow, because he isn’t a fool. He knows very well that the proverbial excrement is gonna hit the proverbial ventilation unit very soon and there’s no way in hell he’ll miss out on that. Loki has been trying to wish him away through sheer mental force but the sonofabitch keeps on lurking. He is always lurking. The others, they come and go and sometimes don’t emerge for days or even weeks, but Nikias is almost always there when he is conscious these days and Loki will be damned if he ever understands why their connection is so strong. Why Nikias? He’s the one who’s doing the most damage. Not that Loki truly knows anything about the others but, at least, The Voice helps him when he freezes in school. He’s also attracting the bullies with his arrogance on a regular basis, _true_ , but, redneck homophobic asshole Mr. Stokes aside, The Voice helped him to stay in the relatively good graces of his teachers despite his absences and slip-ups and whatnots. The Voice has a purpose. Nikias doesn’t. So, why does it have to be Nikias who’s his constant consciousnesses-converging buddy? Why can’t it be the girl child who’s sweet and doesn’t push people away and loves Thor and Frigga whereas Nikias is just—

 _Trying to protect you_.

“You’re not,” whispers Loki. “You’re making everything worse. Literally everything. You’re hurting _everyone_ , including me. Why are you so delusional?”

 _Try realistic_.

“Just go,” whispers Loki because there are other things that are more important than Nikias right now. Sure, he’s a nuisance, has been for months, but it’s after four p.m. and the woman who gave birth to him said she’d be back on Sunday afternoon, which means she might ring the doorbell any minute now and if he doesn’t stay in control—

 _I’ll gladly take over_.

The girl tries to push them both away.

“No,” whispers Loki because he is already missing two whole days again and he can’t keep letting that happen. “This is _my_ life. Just ... let _me_ live it, please. Both of you. I’ve got stuff to do.”

 _Yeah_ , _right_. _Because you can handle this life_. _Like you handled it when your Mommy finally told you the truth after sixteen years of secrets and lies_.

“That’s not true,” Loki gasps even though it _is_ true. Well, partly true. He was able to handle the revelation because it explained shit tons of things but he wasn’t able to handle the fact that his birthmother is a criminal who lived on the streets before she gave birth to him and he wasn’t able to handle his father-who-isn’t-is-father telling him how glad he’ll be if Loki finally moves out so he won’t have to deal with his meltdowns again and, _holy shit_ , it comes back with full force now, Odin doesn’t love him, he never fucking did, because Odin is all about strong bloodlines and family heritage and he adored his own father and he adores his trueborn son and Loki isn’t his son, no, he might be his adopted son but it’s not Bor’s blood that’s flowing through his veins like it does through Thor’s, _no_ , Loki is just living in his house by accident and he shouldn’t even be here, how could Frigga bring him here and do this to him and why didn’t Hela just get a damn abortion; she must’ve known that Loki shouldn’t have been born in the first place, he’s probably one of those cosmic accidents that happen for no reason at all except for bringing misery upon everything he touches and—

 _Yeah_ , _you’re doing exceptionally well_. _When will you ever understand that I_ —

“Loki?”

“Thor,” Loki gasps, tears of gratitude welling into his eyes when his brother walks into his room because Thor assured him they were still brothers and that he loved him and Nikias can rot in fucking hell if he keeps on insisting on the opposite but, _holy fucking shit_ , _no_ , _oh please_ , _no_ , the girl pushes him out again and she storms towards Thor and throws herself into his arms and Loki is still close enough to feel the pain in his shoulder. Why the hell is she doing this?!

 _Because love has to hurt_ , sighs Nikias. _That’s an unspoken law_ , _right_?

 _Shut up_.

“How, uh,” begins the child, having to clear her throat before she can speak properly. “How did it go?”

“We lost,” says Thor. “Seventeen to fifty-three.” He chuckles grimly. “Pretty embarrassing actually. How about you? You, uh, wanna talk?”

“About what?”

“Well, we might get a visitor later and I’m not sure if you remember what happened on Friday.” Thor’s teeth begin to pull at his lip. “What we told you.”

“I do.”

“Do you, uh, wanna talk about it?”

Yes, thinks Loki. I want to know how you found out and why you didn’t fucking tell me even though, to be fair, he blacked out on the Highway and then he had a panic attack in the bathroom trying to rip his arteries open after he woke up and then he blacked out again and ended up in the hospital. There wasn’t really an opportune moment to bring it up.

The girl shakes the body’s head. “It’s okay to be adopted, isn’t it? There are mamas who can’t have babies but they want one and they’ll love it anyway, just like mama loves me.”

“Yeah. That’s, uh, that’s exactly right.” Thor actually looks surprised at this and Loki is taken by surprise as well because she makes it sound so fucking simple or, maybe, it truly _is_ that simple after all.

 _It’s not_.

No, it’s not. It hurts to know that your biological mother didn’t want you. It hurts to know that your adoptive father can’t bring himself to care for you because you aren’t his by blood. It hurts to know that you’ll never be like your big brother who everyone admires so much and no amount of love can fix the knowledge that he’s a piece of filth from the street that is only living in this house because Frigga was at the right place at the right time. No amount of love can fix that he shouldn’t _be_ here.

“She’s not gonna take me away, is she?” asks the girl.

“No,” says Thor. “You belong here and we’re not gonna let her. _I_ am not gonna let her. You’re my brother and I’ll protect you, I promise.”

“Your promises don’t mean anything to anyone anymore,” Nikias snarls, suddenly taking over, and Thor flinches and Loki’s heart gives a painful lurch and he tries to push forward. “And by the way, the child you’ve been speaking to is not your _brother_. She’s a _girl_ and her name is Leah.”

“A girl?” Thor echoes, his eyes going wide. “Wait, is that why you started wearing make-up?”

Loki can’t help the chuckle rising in his throat as soon as he is back in control. “Oh, brother, your mind works in such simple ways. It’s almost enviable.”

Well, control might be a bit of an overstatement because he isn’t really in control. Nikias and Leah are both still there and if he doesn’t channel all the mental and emotional strength he doesn’t actually have, he’ll be pushed out again real soon.

Thor narrows his eyes at him. “Look, I am really trying to … Dammit, Loki, I love you and I just wanna understand what’s going on in that brain of yours, so that I can help you out but, no, you keep pushing me away every single time. Why do you always have to be such a jerk? Why can’t you be more like Leah? You can actually learn a lot from that kid, you know? Like how to not push people away when they’re trying to help you!”

And just like that, _whooooosh_ , everything blurs again, because that question fucking hurts more than anything he found out before because it means that Nikias was right _ALL ALONG_ , Thor doesn’t love him anymore, he loves the child that Loki was and not the deranged fucking psycho ass drama queen he has become because _that_ Loki isn’t lovable anymore, he’s arrogant and full of hate and anger and he pushes people away and he stirs up anger and hate and disdain in other people and Leah wouldn’t do that, no, _she would NEVER do that_ , she’s sweet and nice and she hugs people and that’s why she is deserving of Thor’s love and he isn’t and maybe Loki should just let her live in his body for the rest of his life because if Thor truly doesn’t love him anymore, there’s no point.

If Thor doesn’t love him anymore, he doesn’t want to exist anymore.

* * *

As the boy who she gave birth to is battling his dissociative disorder upstairs, Hela works up the courage to ring the doorbell. She’s high on oxy—higher than she _intended_ to be, actually, which is why she had to walk some of it off before facing them—and if Odin is there, he’ll probably kick her right back out if he picks up on the glaze in her eyes. He’ll do and say a lot of things that will inevitably piss her off and mentally throw her back into the childhood she tried so very hard to forget and that’s why she’s pulling her finger back for the fourth time already because, _dammit_ , maybe she’ll just take her chances. She survived all the other crap the universe flung her way, so maybe she’ll be lucky again. Maybe she’ll be magically cured. Maybe she won’t need the kid.

 _Bullshit_.

She’s lying to herself as always.

The truth is, she just doesn’t want to look at the kid. Doesn’t want the kid to remind her of all the cold and lonely nights she spent in the alphabets violating her own pride and her own dignity. Doesn’t want to gaze into the kid’s eyes as he defends whoever beat the shit out of him with some crappy, compliant accident-excuses.

The truth is, she doesn’t want to look at Odin either. Doesn’t want him to remind her of the weak little girl that couldn’t defend herself against every single person who ever hurt her that still lives inside of her no matter how adamantly she tried to poison it. Doesn’t want to gaze into his eyes and hear him mock her for being pathetic when, in reality, she became stronger than he’ll ever know.

That fucking old bastard has no power over her anymore and Hela’s finger lands on the doorbell to prove it to herself.

 _Riiiiiiiiiing_.

She draws a deep breath to calm herself. Odin will be an asshole, yes, but he can’t hurt her anymore, she won’t fucking let him, and, at least, Frigga is easy to handle. Whatever happened to her in the last one and a half decades, being married to that fucker for so long probably, turned her from a strong, confident woman into a complete emotional wreck that would have crumbled if Thor hadn’t fucking strode up to the house like some white knight on some fucking horse. It’s really fucking disgusting how Prom King-ish he turned out. He is a fucking quarterback, for fuck’s sake and, _yes_ , she googled him. She shouldn’t have done that because it made her feel like crap about herself but she kept on scouring his social media profiles anyway because she never particularly excelled in self-preservation.

If she did, she wouldn’t be here today.

She wouldn’t have to ring this doorbell. She wouldn’t have to listen to the steps approaching the door from the other side, wouldn’t have to look her former somewhat-step-dad in the eye again eighteen years after he cast her adrift.

 _Holy fuck_.

 _Holy freaking fuck_.

It wasn’t the shadows. Up close, Odin looks even more like a James Bond villain with his pale blue, unforgiving glare and his sinister frown than he did in the car the other night, but maybe that’s just the oxy messing with her mind.

“If you’re here to take your child back,” Odin says without preamble, his tone as harsh as she remembers it, “forget it. He’s ours now and you’ll never get custody.” He is blocking the door. He’s actually fucking blocking the door, guarding the wretched little bundle of hysteria that came out of her sixteen-year-old pussy.

An astonished laugh slips past Hela’s lips. “What makes you think I want it back?”

“Him,” Odin corrects her. “Not it.”

“Him,” Hela replies. She used the pronoun before, sure, but it tastes odd on her tongue because, not only did she saw the kid two days ago and he didn’t particularly look like a him, but she always referred to him as just this. The kid or the baby; a neutral, genderless thing for which she just so happened to use he-pronouns sometimes because it came with a penis. Did she even call him he before she actually saw him on Friday though? Probably not because you can call a baby an it and that’s perfectly fine, isn’t it, to refer to a baby and say, “oh, it’s hungry”, no wait, that’s not really acceptable, is it, it doesn’t sound _quite_ right, but it sounds even worse if you refer to a teenager that way and that’s what he grew up to be, he’s no longer a small thing that can’t talk, he’s an actual human now with a voice and he’s—

“Hey!” Odin snaps his fingers in front of her face, narrowing his eyes before he scoffs at her. “Gosh, you’re still high, aren’t you? How come you’re not dead yet?”

Dammit, she needs to focus or she’ll fucking blow her only chance asking for the kid’s help. “You know what they say. Bad weeds grow tall.”

“What do you want after all this time?” Odin asks as Hela tries to snatch a peek inside but there is no one in the hallway.

“I just need to speak to him.”

“About what?”

“I’ll tell _him_ that if you don’t mind,” Hela replies, locking eyes with him. Shit, he grew old too but not like Frigga. His eyes aren’t so weary and he doesn’t seem as exhausted as his wife even though he’s still fucking old. “I’m curious though. Is he turning out every bit as ‘wretched’ and ‘deranged’ as I was at that age?”

“He has his own share of psychological issues,” comes Odin flat reply.

Hela chuckles. “Gosh, you really haven’t changed one bit.”

“That makes two of us.” Odin snorts. “Well, come on in, if you must but make it quick. Loki isn’t exactly doing well right now.”

 _Loki_ , _huh_?

“Oh yeah, I saw. Someone roughed him up pretty good,” Hela remarks pointedly.

“I don’t like your tone,” Odin snaps at her and for a second she is convinced he’ll call her ‘young lady’. “Have I ever laid hands on you, hm? I think you’re confusing me with one of your mother’s other acquaintances. Loki got into a fight in school.”

“She’s dead, by the way,” Hela blurts out because, _fuck_ , she’s still pretty damn high. “In case you wanted to know.”

Odin sighs. “Drugs?”

“Abused to death. Her last acquaintance actually pushed her out of a window.” Hela erupts into a giggle. “Can you imagine that? He pushed her out of a fucking window and she splashed and spattered onto the ground outside like a jelly doughnut.” She squeezes her hand for emphasis, making squelching sounds. “Gosh, that must have been so awful but then again, she had it coming, didn’t she? Pathetic old bitch.”

“You should be ashamed to speak about your own mother that way,” is the first thing Frigga says to Hela when she emerges from the kitchen and it dawns on Hela then that the old hag is actually preparing food and, _boy_ , does that food smell good!

“I don’t do ashamed,” Hela says as she pushes past Frigga into the kitchen, inhaling the smell. It’s a roast. A fucking roast. She didn’t have a roast in a hundred years. “You’re seriously making dinner?” She giggles. “I was joking actually but I’ve got to say, it doesn’t even smell half-bad. He said it, though.” She jerks her thumb in Odin’s direction.

“Said what?” Frigga asks with a glare at her husband, probably because he let her filthy, drugged ass into their precious home.

“When I told him my mother moved in with another wife-beating specimen, he said, ‘She had it coming’.”

Frigga clears her throat. “Do you maybe want a coffee to sober up before you speak to him?”

“No, thank you,” says Hela as she reaches for the bottle of wine that Frigga probably opened for the meal or maybe because she needed some liquid courage for this herself. “This’ll do.”

Before she can ask for a glass though, the kid— _Loki_ , _her son_ —walks into the kitchen in black Nightmare before Christmas sweatpants and a bottle green hoodie that is probably two sizes too big. Well, technically he doesn’t really walk, he’s being dragged into the room by Thor, who’s holding his fucking hand. Hela squints but when her eyes open again, they’re still holding hands. _What in the actual freaking fuck_?

“You must be Hela,” whispers the kid as he stretches out his hand and Hela’s mouth gapes open because, _dammit_ , what was that about him having grown into a teenager? He talks like a fucking toddler or maybe she’s only imagining that because her conscience is playing tricks on her or maybe it’s just the painkillers or maybe he’s just crazy even though he did not seem so crazy on Friday. “I am Loki. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Why are you talking like a retard?” Hela blurts out before she can stop herself.

Frigga growls her name as a warning.

“What is a retard?” asks the kid.

“A person who is retarded? Like, mentally?” Hela asks back, raising her index finger and making a circling motion beside her temple. “Acting kinda like you do right now.”

“He is _not_ retarded,” says Frigga but the kid—he’s literally still a fucking kid, isn’t he—just stares at her, thinking over her words and then he shrugs, lowering his hand. “Your hair looks funny.”

For a moment, Hela can just stare, asking herself why the hell she even made the drive back here. She should have known they were gonna try to brain-fuck her. Fucking assholes. She wants to beat the crap out of all of them, including the kid, even though he already got a pretty nasty bashing, the purple-blue of his bruise gradually fading into a yellowish-green that looks like the actual color of fucking vomit at the edges. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You didn’t talk like this on Friday!”

“I wasn’t here on Friday,” says the kid.

“Yes, you were,” says Hela but it comes out as a question because how can she be sure, for fuck’s sake? She’s high on painkillers facing her long-ignored childhood traumas. She’s probably hallucinating or maybe she’s having a psychotic break or something. Maybe she’s going crazy herself.

“Well, Loki’s state of mind kinda varies from moment to moment,” Thor explains very, very unhelpfully. “Sometimes, he is acting like thirty-five, sometimes he’s a toddler and sometimes he’s a teenager. That’s just who he is, okay?”

“Okay?” Hela echoes, her voice climbing at least three octaves in hysterical, drug-fueled anger. “No, it’s _not_ okay! There’s absolutely no need for you to make such a scene. It’s not as if I suddenly want my kid back or anything!”

“What _do_ you want then?” Frigga asks just as Odin snorts a laugh. “Oh, We’re not making a scene, I’m afraid. I guess that’s just what happens when you take drugs while you’re pregnant. In case you didn’t know, drugs can have detrimental effects on an unborn child’s brain. It’s messing them up.”

“Odin,” Frigga reprimands him as she wraps her arms around her son’s shoulder as if to shield him from his father’s words and, yes, he’s _their_ son and Odin is his Dad, he’s totally his Dad and he can totally keep him.

“Out with it,” demands Frigga, “What are you doing here after all this time? What do you want?”

What Hela wants at this very moment is to flee this house, crawl into her car and drive herself straight off the next cliff.

What she needs is a different matter.

“I’m here because I’m sick,” Hela concedes and then she removes her funny-looking hair a.k.a. her wig, revealing the few sorry ass strands of leftover hair that are still plastered to her skull. “Leukemia. Which is a real bitch. My only chance is a bone marrow donation and, as I’m sure you know, the waiting lists are insane and, since my Mom’s sorry existence came to such a violent end a few years ago, my son is the only living blood relative that I know of, so.” She shrugs the rest, gazing into their astonished faces. “That’s why I am here. And because I ran into Thor, I suppose. Because if I hadn’t run into him, I wouldn’t have followed him here and I wouldn’t have seen the kid in your car and I would’ve still believed that it, uh, that you gave it up for adoption.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, Thor. Yes, he still has tons of issues too, which might have been easily overlooked during the past chapters in which he was dealing with the whole thing rather well (or, at least, better than his parents), but one of those issues is that he can't deal with Loki's rejection aaaand voilá :) 
> 
> And apparently, he forgot that landlines exist *coughs*
> 
> And Hela, well, at least she kept herself from saying that she actually thought the baby had died. You gotta give her points for trying.
> 
> And Odin, I guess you never really know what's going through his mind at any specific moment, do you? Well, neither do I and I actually kinda like it that way. My apologies.
> 
> Oh, and the alphabets are a code name for an area with a particularly high crime rate in Las Vegas at this time with lots of prostitution and drug trafficking and everything else that comes with it going on.
> 
> Stay tuned and please let me know what you think. I've been going through a rough week that made me question my writing a lot and I could appreciate some feedback x
> 
> See y'all soon xxx


	30. Not your brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The powder keg finally explodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, we've reached the ominous incident and, as a wise person once said, "I don't understand the concept of too much Loki whump."
> 
> Also, @lizzycm commented "Why do I get the feeling that someone is going to be murdered?" on the last one and I think it captures the general mood pretty well. 
> 
> Before we start: This is the longest chapter in this fic (5,548 words) but I didn't have it in me to drag this out any further or split it up into two chapters or whatever. At this point, you really deserve to know and, on the plus side, I don't think this one drags at all ;)
> 
> I also want you to keep two things in mind. 1) I do consider Hela the "villain", even if the concept is dreadfully outdated but you get my meaning. 2) They're all traumatized in their own way. Except for Odin, maybe, but even he had the crap beat out of him when he was a kid, so there's that. 
> 
> Now, let the "fun" begin.

**_Sunday, September 29 th 2019_ **

  
  
_**Moments to the incident** _

Thor listens to Hela’s brazen demand, his blood boiling with rage because of her audacity and because she made it clear that it’s his fault she’s here because, if he hadn’t lost his shit and beaten his brother up, he would never have been at that hospital and he would never have lured this bitch into their lives and because he messed up earlier, in Loki’s room, when he realized a second too late that it wasn’t Loki who told him Leah’s name, _no_ , it was Mr. Let’s-get-ourselves-killed-on-the-Interstate who pushed him away and _he_ still pushed Loki away again by saying he wished he’d be more like Leah and now that sweet innocent child has to hear her birthmother say such horrible things and even if he is sort of glad that he managed to protect Loki from hearing it, his heart still aches for the child and everything is so fucked up that, for a second, Thor wishes he’d still be stuck in Wyoming.

“You’re not actually serious?” asks Odin but it doesn’t really sound like a question. “You come here after all this time, stoked out of your damn mind, only to ask for your son’s _tissue_?”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?” Hela laughs nervously as she readjusts her wig and Frigga just stares at her, mouth open, her arms still around Loki’s shoulders, still holding him close, protecting him. _Her_. _Gosh_ , _this is so fucking confusing_.

“Well, too bad that he can’t give consent right now,” Odin grumbles, which gives Thor hope that his parents at least talked about his brother’s mental state while he was away, even if it was probably brief.

“You seriously want him to save your life after what you did to _him_?” Frigga finally asks in a trembling voice. “You … he …”

“I gave _him_ life, didn’t I?” asks Hela, her pale I-would-have-passed-for-Galadriel-if-I-hadn’t-opened-my-mouth-spewing-venom-at-y’all-and-my-pupil’s-weren’t-fucking-pinheads-face twisting into a frown.

“No, _you_ almost let him _die_ ,” Thor yells at her before he can stop himself and both Hela and Loki—Leah—flinch from his thunderous voice. “You almost let him fucking die and you wrote a note that said, ‘I hope you enjoy your gift’!”

“Thor, stop,” whimpers Leah, tears spilling out of her eyes. “Don’t yell at her, please. She’s sick.”

“What the hell were you thinking when you wrote _that_?” Thor continues anyway because his anger is unquenchable, especially because Hela fucking reaches for the wine on the counter and takes a long swig straight from the bottle as if she owns the goddamn place. “And what the hell do you think gives you the right to—”

“Didn’t you hear the kid?” asks Hela, raising the bottle, her voice like fingernails on a chalkboard. “I am sick. Cheers. To cancer reuniting families since, well, year one.”

“Put that down,” barks Odin.

“How can you speak of a _re_ union if there never was a union in the first place?” Leah who isn’t Leah anymore asks, all heads snapping towards Loki, and Thor would be fucking damned if he understood what pulled his brother back into his mind right now.

“What in the hell,” Hela gasps, her jaw dropping. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” asks Loki.

“Fucking around like that?”

“You heard the man,” Loki says with a jerk of his head in Odin’s direction, a shark-like grin pulling at the corners of his lips. “My brain is messed up.”

So much for having protected him from what was said earlier.

 _Damn_.

Frigga exhales a breath, massaging her brows with her fingers.

“Glad to see you have finally returned to us,” mumbles Odin. “Now, let’s talk this out over dinner like civilized people, yes?”

“Talk this out,” Loki deadpans or maybe it isn’t Loki because Loki and Interstate-Loki—Nikias probably—were both there before Leah took over again but Thor can’t really tell at this point. “What is ‘this’ exactly? Me being abandoned as a baby and lied to my entire life? Me being considered as nothing more than a tissue supplier by the person who was supposed to raise me? You treating me like the piece of street trash that I apparently am? What?”

 _Damn_ , _that is definitely Loki_.

“All of it,” says Odin; astonishingly with no further comment on Loki’s evaluation of his behavior.

“Yeah, right.” Loki cackles. “You can’t possibly expect me to sit down at a table with that sorry excuse of a person to munch away on a fucking Sunday roast and act like a family as if you all weren’t a fake bunch of lying cowards that fucked up my life and she wasn’t an ice-cold bitch that couldn’t have cared less about me because if you do, I’ll lose _my goddamn mind_!”

 _Nope_ , _that can’t be Loki_.

 _The hell_?

“I think you already lost that,” Hela comments. “No offense, kiddo.”

Seeing them in the same room together with their black hair and their pale skin, hearing his somewhat-half-step-sister’s scathing comments, there’s literally no mistaking they are related and it seems to Thor that whoever inhabits Loki’s body right now realizes this too because her comment takes the wind out of his sails. He inhales and truly looks at her for the first time, his lips opening as he processes her appearance, and there’s something like longing flickering through his eyes as he slowly breathes out. He takes a step towards her, yanks the bottle out of her hands and takes three large swigs before Odin manages to snatch it from him. “Give me _that_!”

“Wow,” Hela whispers.

Loki breathes out again before he says, “Fine. One hour. Shoot.”

Frigga asks whether they should sit down but no one makes a move to leave the kitchen.

Odin places the wine bottle far out of both Loki’s and Hela’s reach.

Thor is holding his breath.

Loki glares at Hela, who begins to fiddle with the cuff of her shirt. “So, they named you Loki, huh?” She clears her throat. “That’s not bad.”

Loki’s eyes flicker dangerously. “What name did you give me?”

“I just called you ‘kid’,” Hela replies and Thor swallows because, _holy shit_ , how can anyone, high or not, be so fucking insensitive?

“How original,” Loki observes dryly and, going by the tone of his voice alone, Thor is almost sure it is Loki after all. “Okay, where do we start? Oh, right. Who is my father?”

Frigga inhales a sharp breath, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter, knuckles standing out white.

“Hell, I have no idea,” Hela replies. “But whoever he was, you’re far better off if you never meet him.”

“So, he was a client?”

Hela shrugs. “I really don’t know. Possibly.”

“Well, whoever he was, he was probably incredibly smart because we all know you can’t have inherited your intelligence from your birthmother,” remarks Odin.

Hela narrows her eyes at him. “Excuse me?”

“What _did_ you mean by ‘gift’?” Loki chimes in. “Why did you bring me here? Considering the overwhelming amount of kind-heartedness you’ve been displaying so far, I really am curious.”

“So am I,” Frigga adds and, if her tense expression is anything to go by, she has a hard time swallowing whatever else it is she desperately wants to add.

Hela chuckles nervously. “Well, I don’t know how much they told you,” she says to Loki, avoiding Frigga’s gaze as if it could make her burst into flames, “but Odin here kicked me out even though he knew that my Mom’s boyfriend was beating the crap out of both of us. He only pretended to care about me while he when he was banging my Mom but once Frigga came along, we were no longer good enough. I was fourteen when I came here after this asshole beat the crap out of me and—”

“We took you in,” interrupts Frigga, anger making her voice tremble in a way Thor never heard it tremble before this day. “And tried to take care of you.”

Hela tsks. “You call that _care_? You kicked me the fuck out! Despite all your knowledge about what happens to children out there from your fucking cases, you kicked out a young teenager, knowing she’d either have to go back to an abusive hellhole of a home or end up on the fucking streets and you did it _anyway_!”

“We tried,” yells Frigga, stifling a sob. “ _I_ tried. We even called CPS and—”

“Oh, you called CPS?” snaps Hela and Thor can just watch them as his brain is trying to process that he stranded in the middle of a reality TV show. “Well, I guess that made _all_ the difference!”

“Let’s not forget that you didn’t make an effort whatsoever though. You stole our money,” snarls Odin. “We tried to give you shelter and you turned around and stole family heirlooms to feed your drug addiction. Hell, you even stole Thor’s toys! You showed us zero respect!”

“He had way too many,” Hela defends herself. “It wasn’t like he could ever play with all of them.”

“Are we seriously fucking talking about _toys_ now?” Loki suddenly explodes, startling them all. “Who in this room fucking cares about _toys_? I asked you why you left this note!”

“Because I wanted them to feel horrible,” Hela blurts out and, for the first time, her I-don’t-give-a-damn façade is beginning to crack. “I thought you were … I wasn’t thinking straight, I … I tried to stop with the drugs when I realized I was pregnant but as soon as you were out, I started using again, so … I don’t …”

“Oh, you _do_ know,” says Frigga. “I know that you do. What _did_ you think?”

“I, uh, I thought he was … already dead,” Hela presses out.

“A-and you ...” Tears pool into Frigga’s eyes as she chokes on the words.

“You called a dead baby a gift,” Thor voices what his mother left unspoken and no words existing in the English language could ever properly describe the abject terror that stirs deep within him. “You … you …wanted them to them to feel horrible about …”

“I can’t believe you just said that out loud,” Odin whispers, for once flustered into speechlessness.

“Look, that was a long time ago.” Hela swallows. “I’m _not_ that person anymore. I mean, I’m still not a good person but I—”

“No, you’re a _terrible_ person to come here and disrupt Loki’s life because of your selfishness,” hollers Odin, grabbing her by the arm. “Which is why you’re leaving this house _now_!”

“Selfishness? If I hadn’t brought him here, he would’ve died,” insists Hela, jerking away from Odin with a lot more force than Thor would have expected her cancer-ridden body to possess. “The least he can give me in return is a bit of his tissue.” Hela’s almost pupil-less eyes flit to Frigga. “And you? I gave you my child, didn’t I? How’s that selfish? You should be eternally grateful.”

“You gave me your child because you hoped I would pick up a fucking corpse!” Frigga yells and Loki flinches, tears welling into his eyes, and Frigga’s hands fly to her mouth, covering it in shock. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m …”

Loki stifles a sob into a quiet whimper.

“You don’t even know what you’re _saying_ ,” Thor spits at Hela. “You don’t even know what you did to him and you probably weren’t ever sober enough to _care_!”

“That’s not,” Hela begins but her voice trails off.

“Why didn’t you just have an abortion?” Loki asks Hela, his voice cracking, his eyes drowning in tears and pain. So much fucking pain. “You could’ve saved us both a lot of trouble.”

Hela’s lips part and, for the first time, she looks at her son as if he was an actual human being with actual human emotions. Something flickers through her eyes and she shakes her head, a small, desperate laugh escaping through her pinched lips. “I’d rather not tell you that.”

“Did you even try to … keep me?” Loki whispers. “At all?”

“I tried for a couple of days,” Hela admits, “but I just couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.” A surprised laugh escapes her lips. “I truly am sorry?” She blows out a ‘huh’ sound. “That’s—”

“So that means my birthday isn’t even the first of November,” Loki whispers, his mind latching onto things as quickly as ever, even despite his distress.

“That’s the day I found you,” says Frigga.

“So, when is my real birthday?” Loki asks in a brittle voice.

“October twenty-s…seventh.” Hela looks thoughtful. “I think.”

Loki stares at her, lips quivering, mouth agape. “ _You think???_ ”

“I went into labor ‘round eleven on the twenty-sixth. You made it out kinda fast but I don’t remember how fast. Could have been before midnight, could have been after.” Hela has the good graces to look at least somewhat ashamed. “Sorry, kiddo.”

“So you didn’t deliver him in a hospital, I take it?” asks Frigga but her shaky voice makes it clear that she already knows the answer.

A chuckle slips Hela’s lips and Thor’s fists never itched to bash another person’s face to a bloody pulp more than in this very moment. “No, it was a backroom of a bar off the Strip.”

“You fucking whore,” spits Thor.

“Thor, please,” Frigga urges him as all color drains from Hela’s face, defending that bitch despite everything she did, everything she said.

“I don’t even have a birthday,” Loki whispers under his breath, tears streaming down his face. “I don’t even know my _birthday_ … My whole life …” His chest rises and falls and his shoulders tremble, sharp gasps coming out of his mouth as rapidly as gunshots. “It’s all a lie … It’s all …”

“Loki, please,” Frigga whispers.

“I’m a mishap … I come from a … From a …”

“Loki,” Frigga tries again, reaching for his trembling shoulders but he jerks away from her.

“Don’t you fucking _touch_ me,” Loki howls, exploding into hysteria. “You’re all so full of shit that the sewage plant is going green with envy! You’re nothing but a bunch of fucking liars!” He pauses for breath. “But it all makes sense now, doesn’t it?” He guffaws, sounding like Maleficent after she cursed the baby princess. “The reason my mind is so fucked up and I’m such a weirdo ass fucking _freak_ is because this bitch here was on drugs while she was pregnant with me! I hate you! You ruined my life before I was even born! I fucking hate all of you! You knew that she was on drugs! You could have sat me down, saying, ‘Listen, Loki, your mom was a crack whore, so that’s why you’re such a fucking freak,’ but no, you kept me in the dark! Fucking liars! Fucking cowards!”

“You’re not a freak,” says Frigga, her voice so thick with pain that Thor is scared she’s gonna choke on it.

“And it was coke, not crack,” Hela provides flatly. “Well, mostly coke.”

“I don’t believe this,” comes from Odin.

Frigga exhales another annoyed breath, trying to ignore Hela. “There is nothing wrong with your brain, honey.”

“Shut up, Mom! Just … _Shut up_! Don’t you _understand_? You messed me up. All of you!” Loki’s eyes land on Odin, then on Frigga. “You lied to me my whole fucking life!” He glares at Thor. “You just left me here and didn’t even _care_!” He turns to Hela. “And you don’t even remember the day you squeezed me out of your fucking pussy. You never cared about me until you needed tissue from me and then expect me to agree just because … what? Because you _gave birth_ to me?” He snorts a laugh. “Giving birth is not an accomplishment. That’s what your body is evolutionarily programmed to do if you have a fucking baby inside of you! You didn’t give a damn about what happened to me when I was depending on you to survive as a fucking newborn. Why would _I_ care if you died a wretched death now?”

From one second to the next, Loki goes eerily still. His face hardens. His eyes deaden. “I hope your cancer eats you alive and I hope they run out of morphine, so that you’ll feel every agonizing second of it.” He turns around, walks out of the kitchen and stomps up the stairs.

“I guess that was a ‘no’.” Hela gives a shrug and the door slams shut upstairs.

“You’re a horrible person and you should be ashamed of yourself,” Frigga whispers, tears creeping into her voice. “We all tried to give you another chance but you have done nothing but disrespect both Loki and our hospitality. We want you to leave now.”

“ _Hospitality_?” Hela guffaws. “Hospitality, my ass!”

“You get the hell out of this house now or I’m going to call the cops on you!” Odin hollers, his voice eerily breathless all of a sudden. Breathless or not, though, as soon as the old man raises his voice, Hela shivers. _Not so tough now_ , _are you bitch?_

“Fine,” says Hela. “Here’s my number. Just in case he changes his mind.” She throws a business card onto the counter and guess what? She’s a tattoo artist. A fucking artist. Just like Loki.

_Shut the hell up._

Hela strides out of the house and slams the front door shut behind her with a loud bang that echoes through the hallway but before anyone can say a word, there comes a blood-curdling cry from upstairs, followed by the shattering of something, something like glass or porcelain, and Thor sprints upstairs at once, his parents at his heels.

“Loki, no!” Thor yells as he storms into the room.

His brother is standing in front of his wardrobe, his left fist crashing into its mirror door again and again and again, blood running down his arm, shards of glass raining onto the floor and onto his socks, and Thor tries to pull him back but he is scared to hurt him, so he just stands behind him like the useless fucking idiot that he is.

“Loki, stop!” cries Frigga. “God, _please_ stop!”

“It’s all a lie!” Loki screeches, ramming his hand into the mirror again. “It’s all a lie! It’s all a fucking lie!”

“That’s it, you’re going in-patient,” Odin screams at Loki as he violently jerks him away from the wardrobe despite his injuries. “Right now!”

“What?” yells Thor, all thoughts eluding him for a moment because how can this be the fucking conclusion to ANYTHING that just happened?

“Noooo,” screams Loki.

“Yes! You’re going to pack your bags and we’re going to drive you to the next psych ward! _Now_!”

“Odin no,” Frigga urges him.

“Noooo!” Loki howls. “You can’t make me! That’s not fair!”

“Not fair? _Not fair_?” Odin hollers, shaking him so violently that Loki yelps before Thor manages to yank him off his brother. “You’ve been cutting into your own flesh for months! You won’t stop hurting yourself! God only knows what comes next! It’d be irresponsible to let you live here any longer!”

“Dad, calm down,” pleads Thor, squeezing his father’s shoulder. “Please. Just … _calm down_. Let’s all just … take a deep breath.”

“You can’t do that,” Loki whispers, his voice cracking like a thin layer of thawing ice that you poke with a stick. “Y-you can’t do that! I am going to therapy! My appointment is on _Wednesday_. What more do you want? You can’t just send me away! I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to …” He glances at his bloody hand, choking on a sob. “I … I just … Please, Papa. I’m sorry. I’m gonna clean up, I promise.”

“Loki, I don’t care about the mess. You need therapy and medication and that’s something none of us can give you,” gasps Odin. “We fear for your life, don’t you understand that? You can’t just—”

“Look, we understand you’re upset, honey,” Frigga whispers, reaching for Loki’s right hand that isn’t damaged right now but that is still stitched up from the last time he hurt himself. “You have every right to be upset and if there’s anything—”

“If there’s anything we can do, it’s ensuring that he gets psychiatric care as soon as possible,” Odin cuts her off before turning back to Loki. “Now, please, pack your bags.”

Loki flinches and Thor can almost hear the suspenseful music that would have started playing in the background if they’d been characters in a psychological horror thriller and the hairs on his arms begin to tingle. _Maybe you wouldn’t butt heads with Loki all the time if you tried to speak his language every once in a while_. Thor isn’t fluent in misunderstood genius but he knows what Loki needs the most, has always needed the most. His big brother on his side. “Please guys, just give him a few days to digest the news, okay? He didn’t have _any_ time to think about any of the fucked-up shit you all just dumped on him. Do you really think it’s fair to push him away like that?”

A soft smile of gratitude steals onto Loki’s lips.

“This is all _your_ fault,” Thor continues. “If you guys hadn’t lied to him, he wouldn’t have had to find out about Hela like this. For fuck’s sake, she doesn’t even remember when she gave birth to him! You were in the same room when she spit all that shit into his face just now! How is he supposed to deal with any of this, huh?”

Frigga inhales a trembling breath.

“Can you imagine any of that happen to _you_ , Mom?” Thor takes a threatening step towards her. “ _Can you_? Gosh, just cut him some slack for once!”

“If we cut him any more slack, it’ll be too late,” says Odin and, despite everything, Thor senses for the first time in months or maybe even years that their father actually cares about Loki; even if he does it in the weirdest fucking ways possible. “Look, son. You may think we want to get rid of you but that’s not what this is, okay? Just look at you. You’re self-destructing! You’re drinking, you’re cutting yourself, you black out on a regular basis. You even wet your goddamn bed! You … you need _help_.”

“Dad, come on. How do you expect him to cope—” Thor begins just as Frigga says, “We can’t just send him away like—”

“Enough with the excuses!” Odin roars, cutting them both off, his temper getting the best of him once again, his entire face turning crimson.

“What if I refuse?” Loki asks, his voice thickening as tears pool into his eyes again.

“You’re not going to refuse because you’re not going to have a choice,” Odin informs him, seemingly oblivious of or indifferent to Loki’s state of mind. “Your mother has watched you spiral out of control long enough and I won’t—”

“She’s _not_ my mother,” Loki whispers under his breath.

“No?” Odin blares. “Then who raised you? Who changed your diapers? Who kissed you goodnight and rocked you to sleep? Who pampered you and spoiled you all your life and showered you with her love these past few months even though you wouldn’t give _anything_ back except for door slamming and vitriolic accusations?”

“I’m glad you recognize it wasn’t _you_ ,” Loki sobs and Thor has no clue how—or _why_ —he is still trying to lash out even though it’s painfully obvious that he’s fucking falling apart right in front of them.

“He’s right,” Frigga whispers, turning to Odin. “Thor is right. We’re going to wait for his appointment with Dr. van Dyne.”

“The hell we are!” Odin yells, flying into a rage. “You think you’re _helping_ him when all you ever did was pat his back. If you continue down this road, he’ll either kill himself or hurt someone else and I’m not going to stand by and let that happen just because you are afraid to do what’s best for him. My decision is final!”

“Dad, please, can’t you just—” Thor tries but his attempt to intervene is stifled by his mother’s desperate cry. “How would _you_ know what’s best for him? All you ever did was—”

“Your judgment was clouded from day one!” Odin blares, cutting her off mid-sentence, always cutting her off, always talking over her. “You felt guilty because you couldn’t save Hela, so you’re trying to save him instead but what you don’t see is that your love alone isn’t enough to save, let alone _fix_ people! You’re going to thank me one day, woman! You’re _all_ going to thank me one day!”

Inexplicably, Loki starts laughing, a shrill, borderline hysterical sound filling the room. “You are forgetting one thing, though, aren’t you?” he asks and his green eyes suddenly look a lot darker even though his face does not change and Thor would be damned if he could tell if it’s still his brother talking. If his brother had been there at all. “You’re not my parents. Am I even _legally_ yours?” Loki shrugs, his lips turning into a smirk. “You can’t send me anywhere.”

Thor swallows because, despite the fact that _he_ is the one who’s actually going to law school, Loki knows more about this stuff than he could ever cram into his head.

Odin barks a strained, breathless laugh. “And what do you think would happen if you opened your mouth to the authorities, hm? You’d bring Child Services to the scene and, whatever you think might come out of this, it wouldn’t help you because, a) everyone with a functioning pair of eyes in their head can see that you’re a danger to yourself and b), your brother broke your bones. They’d take you away instantly and how do you think that would turn out for you? You’d end up in a psych ward anyway and, even if by some miracle you didn’t, you’d end up in a foster home and you’re smart enough to know which would be worse!”

“How can you _be_ like this?” Thor explodes. “Honestly, Dad, who the fucking hell are you and what is wrong with you? When did you become so _cruel_?”

“I’m not being cruel,” Odin pants. “I’m doing what needs to be done to save him from himself and others and that’s all I’m going to say.”

A tear spills out of Loki’s left eye and runs down his cheek as he fixes his gaze on Thor. “I c-could come live with you,” he whispers.

Thor opens his mouth to speak but no sound comes out.

“What?” Odin huffs a desperate laugh, his face twisting into a grimace. “Do you really think your brother can deal with you when you keep spinning out of control like _this_? Do you really except him to—”

“Odin, please,” whispers Frigga. “Just give him a moment to adjust. We can talk about this.”

For a second, the room goes eerily still, Odin’s labored breathing the only sound.

 _You can’t fix Loki and it’s not your job to fix him. He needs professional help_.

He does, he really fucking does.

“Thor?” whispers Loki and there is so much hope and so much longing in his voice that Thor’s heart physically hurts and he wants to say yes but he also thinks about all the times he couldn’t help him in the past few days. His night terrors last weekend. Nikias taking over, trying to kill them, provoking him into breaking his little brother’s collarbone. Loki having a panic attack in the cabin bathroom, clawing at his arteries. Loki hurting himself even now. Always fucking hurting himself.

 _He’s always been going through some mental health issues and you’ve never been able to do much about it_.

No, there’s nothing he can do.

Not a single goddamn thing.

“Of course you could live with me but, uh, how would we even be able to—” Thor interrupts himself when his father draws in a sharp breath, well, a _really_ sharp, _really_ gaspy breath this time, and when he looks at him, Odin grabs his shirt, clutching at his chest as he stumbles backwards, supporting himself against the wall.

“Odin, what’s the matter?” Frigga gasps, rushing to her husband’s side at once.

“I’m f-fine,” Odin presses out but it’s fucking obvious he isn’t fine. His face is pale. Sweat is glistering on his forehead. He can’t even fucking breathe anymore. He tries to steady himself against the doorframe but his knees give out anyway and then he’s already sliding down, back against the wall.

“He’s going into cardiac arrest,” Frigga screams at them both. “Quick, get a phone!”

“You _want_ me around, right?” asks Loki.

“Yes, of course, but _shit_ , fucking hell, Dad’s having a heart attack,” Thor gasps as he fishes his phone out of his pockets but just as he is about to dial, he realizes that it’s still dead and then Loki draws himself to his full height, one of the shards of the mirror suddenly in his hand, _how the fuck did it even get there_ , _when did he even pick it up_ , _for fuck’s sake_ , and damn, that shard is _big_ , _it’s fucking huge_ , and he’s pointing the shard straight at him as Frigga reaches for Loki’s phone on his desk, the shard’s edges reflecting the ceiling light, and in that moment, everything fades away except for Loki’s eyes that have _never_ looked less like Loki’s eyes before.

 _Loki does have different personalities and_ _one of them is a lunatic who hates me_.

“Y-yes, h-hello? I think my husband's having a heart attack.”

 _He just appeared_ , _almost getting us fucking killed_.

“A-and my son is having a mental breakdown.”

 _You can’t make that promise anymore_. _Your promises don’t mean anything to anyone anymore_.

“He h-hurt himself and now he’s trying to hurt his brother. Please, send help.”

 _Nikias says you aren_ ’ _t a protector anymore_.

“9273 Tournament Canyon Drive. _Please_ , you have to hurry.”

“Of course, I want you around.” Thor holds his hands up, palms outstretched, his dead phone in his right. “It’s just that I wouldn’t even know how to … I mean … How am I supposed to … Gosh, please stop. Calm down, okay? Let’s just _talk_ about this! Nikias, right? You listen to me. I love Loki, okay? I love him more than I love anyone else and I’m sure we can work this out, okay? You can tell me wh-why you’re so upset with me and I-I swear I’m gonna make up it up to Loki, to you, to whoever else I hurt. I never meant to hurt him. Never.”

“Loki please,” whispers Frigga because she’s so fucking scared and confused and hasn’t yet understood that her son’s name isn’t Loki anymore right now.

Hell, Thor hasn’t completely wrapped his head around it either because it’s fucking outrageous but he doesn’t have time to think about it because Nikias locks eyes with him, his features smoothing a little, and Thor slowly moves one hand towards him, turning it mid-movement so that his palm faces upwards. “We can talk about this but you’ll have to put down the shard first, okay,” he continues and Nikias lowers his hand, just a tiny little bit.

“That’s right, just put the shard down, brother,” Thor whispers out of sheer habit because he always called Loki brother when he tried to reach him in the past and, because _dammit_ _all_ , isn’t Nikias also his brother in a way if Leah is his sister but, _to hell with all that_ , even before the moniker has left his mouth, Thor knows it was the wrong thing to say. The worst possible thing to say, probably.

“ _I AM NOT YOUR FUCKING BROTHER_ , _YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE_!” Nikias screams in a high-pitched voice and, then, the shard jerks forward, slicing into Thor’s arm as he instinctively raises it to shield himself.

“Stop,” Thor gasps but that is all that comes out of him because, suddenly, there’s this sharp pain in his side, searing through his body, exploding in his brain, almost fucking blinding him, and then his phone clatters to the floor and then there’s _more_ pain, another thrust, another stab, and another, _holy fucking shit_ , and there’s blood too, he sees it, even if he doesn’t truly understand that it’s _his_ blood spurting onto the floor because his vision starts to swim and Frigga cries out in hysteria, “Loki, stop, you’re killing him!” and he doesn’t realize that his Mom is talking about _him_ at first because, _for fuck’s sake, it hurts, it fucking **hurts**_ , and then his legs give out and he crumbles to the floor.

“ _LOKI_!” screams Frigga, her voice coming from a thousand miles away, her blurry face ashen. “What the … how … h-how could you …”

Thor glances up, blinking, his surroundings reduced to hazy shapes.

“You all failed at protecting him,” says Nikias. “It’s my turn now.”

That said, he drops the shard and walks out of the room in Loki’s body and Frigga screams Loki’s name and then she screams Thor’s name or maybe it’s the other way around, he can’t really tell anymore, and his Dad is still slouching against the wall and he’s still panting, eyes bulging, and Thor is suddenly afraid he’s gonna die because even if he has been this terrible asshole lately, he’s still his fucking Dad and he still fucking loves him despite all the shit he pulled and then Frigga’s hands land on him and he can feel her touch and smell her perfume and he feels safe even though there is _so much_ blood, its smell hooking into Thor’s throat, and then he blacks out, sirens wailing in the distance the last thing he hears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, before you start screaming at me, take a deep breath and ask yourselves if there was any other possibility than this? Even if it's a human AU, it's still a Thor AU and, well, we all know their history *coughs*
> 
> The good thing is, they only live about 1.7 miles away from the hospital (yes, I googled it).
> 
> What I really, really want to say though is that people who are suffering from dissociative disorders like DID or OSDD are neither violent nor do they have "violent personalities" or "evil personalities". This is a trope used in horror fiction and other formats (e.g. the "serial killer personality") that is very stigmatizing and very harmful to those suffering from it, which is why I have debated with myself for several months if I should write it like this at all. I almost changed it but this is the story I wanted to tell because it is a Thor AU after all, a Thor AU exploring the dynamics of the movies in a human setting and there was a lot of violence, also on Loki's part. That doesn't mean that Nikias is a killer though. He's traumatized in his own way and he wouldn't go around killing or hurting innocent people. People diagnosed with these disorders are NOT violent. They are NOT killers. Dissociative disorders are very intricate coping mechanisms that shield the affected from having to process their traumas. It does NOT make people VIOLENT. This here escalated due to the extremely toxic dynamics in the family and it doesn't mean that anyone suffering from a dissociative disorder has a murderous personality that wants to harm or kill others just because.
> 
> I just hope that clears it up. I am open for any criticism if I handled this poorly or wrongly in any way. I never meant harm to anyone and I apologize in advance if I did. Please approach me if you feel invalidated by my writing.
> 
> That said, there’s one more (or maybe two more) chapter(s) to come in this series. After that, there’ll be an Interlude told from Nikias’s POV and then we begin the second part that still has the working title ‘Aftermath’ right now.
> 
> See you soon, I hope, and thank you all so very much for your support up until this point.
> 
> I love you all so much x
> 
> PS: Brownie points to the person who guesses what caused Loki to front again.
> 
> PPS: This played on the radio on my way to work this morning and then, again, when I got into my car after work, so that must be a sign:
> 
> 🎶🎶 "Hey, so you tell me you regret your latest choices  
> I've been there before  
> Can't just turn around and tune out all the voices  
> We've all been there  
> When it feels like the walls are caving in  
> And it feels like there's no escaping it  
> Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh  
> When it feels like the walls are caving in  
> You can fight it or you can roll with it  
> Oh-oh, oh-oh  
> You'll feel better tomorrow  
> Even though I know you think you're gonna die  
> You'll feel better tomorrow  
> If you want me to I'll stay with you all night  
> You'll feel better tomorrow (tomorrow)  
> Even though I know there's nothing going right  
> You'll feel better tomorrow" 🎶🎶


	31. You’ve got to hold on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frigga and Hela are trying to come to terms with what happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I tweeted that you were gonna hate some people (even more), notably Odin, Hela, Nikias and me, after the next two chapters? As for Nikias and me, this is why.
> 
> Enjoy x

“M-mom,” Thor gurgles as Frigga crawls over to him, unspeakable terror washing over her. _Oh my God_ , _oh my God_ , _oh my God_. She doesn’t realize that the words are actually coming out of her mouth in a trembling whisper as she reaches for a pillow from the bed to press it onto her son’s wounds.

 _Mark my words_ , _Frigga_ , _learning the truth will destroy him but_ , _hell_ , _you didn’t listen to me sixteen years ago and you’re not going to listen to me now_ , _are you_?

“Shshhsh, keep still,” Frigga whispers but Thor is still already, isn’t he, _yes_ , _OH MY GOD_ , he is passing out and there is so much blood, instantly soaking the pillow as she presses it against his side. “Hold on. Oh my God, please, just hold on. I’m here. Please, you’ve got to hold on, honey. You’ve got to stay strong.”

 _Mark my words_.

Frigga tries to lie Thor down to keep his circulation going, gently cupping his neck, hot tears streaming down her face, her own heartbeat thundering in her ears, and she thinks about how she cradled him in her arms when he was a baby, how she pressed his tiny, bald head against her chest to let him hear her beating heart and, _please_ , he’s only twenty years old. _You can’t take him away_. She can’t lose him now. She can’t. No mother is supposed to lose her twenty-year-old son. She doesn’t know how she keeps herself from succumbing to the horror of the sight in front of her or burst out sobbing but she _does_ , somehow she does prevent herself from breaking down even though Odin might die and Thor might die and Loki is out there and might die too if he suddenly decides to kill himself and, _no_ , _can’t think about that_ , _not now_ , _no_ , _no_ , but there is so much blood, Loki’s blood, Thor’s blood, there’s the bloody shards, the shattered mirror, everything shattered, splitting apart in the blink of an eye, and Loki is so confused and, _gosh_ , _how could he DO this to his own brother_ , Odin was right, wasn’t he, she didn’t SEE, she didn’t ACT, she didn’t TAKE RESPONSBILITY for him, no, _can’t think about that either_ , _NOT NOW_ , and she holds Thor close, applying pressure to his wound on autopilot, pressing her forehead against his, whispering absurd prayers to deities and powers she never believed in, whispering her son’s name, pleading with him to hold on, pleading with him even though there doesn’t seem to be any air left to breathe or any spit left to swallow.

“Frigga,” pants Odin, struggling with his breathing as he drags himself towards her.

“Don’t move,” sobs Frigga. “You fool. Just … _rest_!”

Which, she knows even in her state of terror, is an impossible thing to ask of a father when his child is lying crumpled on the floor, blood pouring from his body.

Odin groans as he puts his hands on top of her bloody hand, pressing the pillow down with her, his body bent forward to ease his labored breathing. “It’s … gonna … be …”

“Don’t speak,” sobs Frigga, almost choking on her tears. “Just breathe.”

* * *

On the pavement below, Hela is leaning against the hood of her car, sucking on a spliff with trembling fingers, trying to calm herself down, trying to dull the oxy high. She should never have rang the doorbell in her fucked-up state. She should’ve waited until her head was clear enough because if she had done that, she wouldn’t have told them that she thought the baby had died and she wouldn’t have lashed out at them, wouldn’t have insulted them, wouldn’t have thrown away her only chance of survival in the doomed battle against leukemia. Okay, she would have insulted them anyway, that’s for sure but the kid … Maybe she would have made more of an effort with him but then again, he was acting like a fucking child for the first ten minutes and then he just fell into hysteria like he did as an infant. Screaming, crying. Always crying. Always screaming. Never silent. Never content. Always loud. So unbearably loud.

She squeezes her eyes shut to keep her vision from spinning and to block out the memories of giving birth in that dark, sticky room all those years ago but it does nothing except for making her feel nauseous because this is one of those times she got far too high by accident—it really _was_ an accident, she _just_ wanted to take the fucking edge off—and now there’s nothing she can do to sober up. She’s completely at the mercy of the drug and it won’t let her go, won’t let her see, won’t let her breathe without vomit sloshing up inside her throat, and _why the hell did she drink the wine_??? _Why the hell is she smoking dope right this fucking minute_???

And why the hell did she even fucking bother?

Any bone marrow donation she receives will be a total waste anyway because she’s been a fucking addict for almost twenty years and if leukemia doesn’t kill her within the next year as the doctor predicted, the drugs probably will do the job soon enough. There’s literally no point. And yet …

“You’re still here.”

Hela forces her eyes open, sirens blaring in the distance. The kid is standing in front of her, nothing more than a fuzzy blob, and she squeezes her eyes shut again and opens them again, another wave of nausea submerging her.

“I, uh,” stammers Hela.

“You still want my help?” asks the kid.

“W-what?” Hela stammers. “Yes, of course.”

_What the hell is happening? This isn’t the same kid he was earlier, is it? She can’t be so high that she’d have imagined—_

“Very well. I’ll help you, if you help me first,” he says and even though she can’t properly see his features, she can hear the smirk in his tone. “Get in the car.”

Hela tries to sharpen her vision with mental force alone. “Wh-what?”

“I need to get away from here, so you’ll have to—” He interrupts himself with a chuckle. “Yeah, okay, you can’t drive. Give me the keys.”

Hela swallows. “Wh-what is going on?”

“What’s going on is this,” says the kid. “You help me get out of here and I’ll have my tissue tested in return, which, I’m afraid, might not even help you at all because only about thirty percent of people who need a bone marrow transplant can find a donor that matches their exact tissue in the immediate family, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Hela gasps because she’s still fucking high and none of this even makes any goddamn sense but if there’s even a slight chance … “But didn’t … you said you wanted me to die. You said …”

“Yeah, I’m emotionally unstable,” says the kid as the sirens draw closer. “I change my mind a lot. Now, give me the keys.”

She hands them towards him and he snatches them from her palm. “Get in the car.”

Hela does as she is told, halfway convinced she is just hallucinating, and she flicks the rest of her joint onto the sidewalk before collapsing into the passenger seat. “Are you even old enough to drive?”

“Sure,” says the kid as he puts the keys in the ignition. “I’m almost sixteen. I got my learner’s permit months ago. And you’re driving automatic.” He chuckles and Hela suddenly thinks of herself on the beach as if she was a cheap actress in some B-movie, dancing across the sand, entirely cancer-free, and she’s still high enough to pine after that stupid vision.

“That makes it a lot easier,” says the kid as he starts the car, pulling away from the curb. “I took lessons in a stick-shift.”

“In one of their ridiculous sports cars, I imagine?” Hela scoffs.

“Thor’s Tesla, yes.” The kid laughs. “Gosh, I hate that status symbol of a car. It’s disgusting.”

“ _He_ is disgusting,” Hela grumbles. “No offense.”

“None taken.” The kid chuckles and what he’s saying about his adoptive brother right now really contradicts what she saw when they walked into the kitchen together earlier. “He’s so arrogant and so damn simple-minded, it’s exhausting.”

The kid _acts_ a lot different now too, come to think of it. He’s no longer a child or a hysterical teenager. He’s a full ass adult.

 _His state of mind kinda varies from moment to moment_.

Something jolts through her body, something like fear or unease, finally clearing the drug-induced mist in front of her eyes and only then does she notice that the kid’s sweater is drenched in blood. His hand is bloody too and there’s tiny splinters of glass imbedded in the wounds on the back of it and there’s an ambulance and two police cars speeding past them as they drive out of the neighborhood.

“W-wait, what … happened up there?” Hela gulps, staring at the blood on his clothes. “What did you do? Did you …?” The words are fleeing her befuddled mind.

“I did what I had to do,” replies the kid, his eyes devoid of any emotion.

“D-don’t tell me you hurt someone up there,” Hela blurts out, gripped by a sudden horror because even if she hates them, hates Odin with a fucking passion, he’s still a fucking human being.

“What if I did?” The kid actually fucking chuckles. “ _You_ , Ma’am, killed an infant. Well, almost killed an infant. You thought you did, anyway, and you were ruthless enough to use a dead baby to get back at your abusers. I did the same.” He shrugs. “I just defended myself.”

“That’s not,” gasps Hela. “I didn’t kill … i-it was an a-accident but … you can’t be saying … The old bastard roughed you up, didn’t he?”

“He got rough sometimes, yes.” The kid’s face is an angry grimace. “But if you’re talking about my eye, that was Thor.”

Hela swallows the vomit down. “Did you—”

“Just relax,” the kid cuts her off. “He will be fine.” He chuckles. “I think. And even if he won’t, what’s it to you? You hate their fucking guts. Plus, _you_ want to _live_ , right?”

“They’re gonna track us down,” Hela wails, the paranoia inevitably kicking in. “I left my number. I … They will …”

“Oh, you mean this?” asks the kid as he fishes her business card out of his pockets, crumbling it inside his palm. “Don’t worry. They don’t know anything about you except for your name and with your kind of lifestyle, I suspect you’re staying under the radar as much as humanly possible.”

“You cunning little shit.” An astonished chuckle rises in Hela’s throat because she recognizes so much of herself in him in this moment that it gives her the fucking creeps.

“I take that as a compliment.” A wry smirk plucks at the kid’s lips. “So, where do you live?”

Hela gulps. “LA.”

“Nice.” The kid whistles. “We’re going on a road trip.”

* * *

Frigga’s knees almost give out when she stumbles down the stairs after the doorbell finally rang. She only realized how close she is to actually breaking down after all when she scrambled to her feet and she has to grab the banister with both of her blood-drenched hands to keep herself from falling and her own heart is beating out of her chest and her vision is blurry and she is so beyond terrified that they’re going to be too late because Thor … She crosses the hallway and heads for the door, astonished that her feet are still carrying her _somehow_ , and when she opens it, there are four paramedics and four uniformed officers and they stare at her and ask her questions and it’s not until that moment that it truly hits her with full force what just happened.

Loki stabbed his own brother.

He stabbed … Because …

“Ma’am?” urges the paramedic, his gaze on her bloody clothes. “We need to know what happened.”

“They’re u-upstairs,” stammers Frigga. “My s-son stabbed his brother. He’s … bleeding and he’s unconscious and m-my husband is … He’s … I think he’s having a heart attack.”

The paramedics all nod at each other and then they push past her, two of them carrying a gurney, two of them carrying equipment, one of them radioing for backup as they clatter up the stairs in their heavy boots, one of the officers charging after them, their footsteps like a heartbeat echoing through the house.

 _Thud_. _Thud_. _Thud_.

Frigga wants to follow them even though she suddenly has zero strength left. Now that help arrived, she doesn’t seem to be able to move anymore. Her vision is blurry, her legs wobbly; her exhaustion threatening to fell her like a tree right there even if those officers expect her to deliver some answers. She sways a little and one of the cops reaches for her arm, steadying her. It’s a woman with red hair, her name tag identifying her as Officer Romanoff. “Where is your other son now, Ma’am?”

“I-I don’t know,” Frigga whispers. “H-he just left and …”

“Any idea where he could have gone?”

“N-no, I …” _Hell_ , _she really has no idea at all_. She drove herself crazy thinking about where he was in between the time he jumped out of the car when she picked him up from school after he showed up drunk for class and then came home, catching her going through his things. “H-he spends most of his time here, in his room, alone. He …”

“Where do his friends live? Any chance he might have—”

“He doesn’t have any friends,” Frigga whispers and the officers exchange a meaningful glance that fuels her anger and gives her a bit of her strength back. “Look, I know how it looks but my son, he’s not a violent person. He has some serious mental health issues. He’s self-harming and he’s suicidal and he just found out he’s adopted and he just met his biological mother and then he … he just snapped and I … Please, you _need_ to find him. He’ll … I’m scared he’ll hurt himself or … worse. He can’t …” And just like that, her strength leaves her again, streaming out of her body like air hissing out of a pierced balloon. “He really isn’t in good shape.”

The officers exchange another glance.

“What does he look like?” asks Officer Romanoff.

“He’s … Here, let me …” Frigga stumbles back into the living room area and reaches for a photo from the wall. The officer who went upstairs with the paramedics comes back down, informing the woman that he called for backup.

“Wh-what do you mean ‘backup’?” asks Frigga.

“Well, your son assaulted and gravely injured his brother,” says the officer who has dark blond hair and looks like he never smiled in his entire life before. “A detective will be here soon to handle the case. You need to stay put.”

“Th-there’s no _case_ here,” Frigga stammers even though there is and she damn well knows it. “Loki is … He just …”

The male officer whose nametag identifies him as Barton pays her no attention as he takes a quick look at the photo and then he and the other two swarm out to comb through the neighborhood and more sirens ring out in the distance and Frigga glances upstairs and wonders how it could have come to _this_ because Loki loves Thor and he isn’t violent except for when he’s going against himself but then again, he isn’t Loki all the time, is he, _no_ , Thor addressed him as Nikias and Thor apparently knows so much more than she does and—

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?” Frigga gulps.

“You said his birthmother was here just now,” says Officer Romanoff and Frigga gives a weak nod. “Where is she now? Could he have gone with her?”

“No,” Frigga replies instantly because Loki told Hela exactly what he thought of her request, didn’t he? “He’s … We’re his … No. There’s no way.”

“Could she have _taken_ him?”

“No,” Frigga says again but that doesn’t sound quite right, does it? “Yes. I mean, I don’t know.” _I thought he was already dead_ … _You gave me your child because you hoped I would pick up a fucking corpse_. “She’s an … addict. She was high when she …” Tears spring to Frigga’s eyes and she sways again, her body failing her when she needs it the most.

The officer catches her, gently leading her to one of the chairs in the dining room area but then the paramedics descend the stairs and Frigga sees Thor on the gurney with an oxygen mask on his face and everything inside her shatters. “Your husband is stable,” says the paramedic. “We administered a glucose-insulin-potassium solution and a second ambulance is on the way.”

Just as he says this, she hears the sirens drawing nearer. “Wh-what about my son?”

“His condition is critical,” says the paramedic and there are no words to describe the sheer and utter terror slamming into her. “I’m sorry. We’re doing the best we can.”

“I-I need to g-go with him,” Frigga whispers.

“No, you need to let those people do their jobs while you tell me exactly what happened here,” says Officer Romanoff. “I’ll drive you to the hospital as soon as we’re done here, I promise. But in case we don’t find Loki, we’ll need to put out an APB and—”

“An APB?” Frigga echoes, her voice cracking as she watches Thor being wheeled out of the house because how, _just how_ , could this have gone so wrong? “He’s _not_ a criminal. Loki isn’t—”

“He needs to be found though,” says the officer and what little fight remained in her leaves her body at once. “So, tell me.”

The entire story comes out in between sobs and more paramedics waltz into the house as Frigga talks and they take Odin away and then another cop walks into her home, a guy introducing himself as Detective Coulson who _looks_ trustworthy enough but who’s still a cop investigating her son who just _committed a crime_ by _assaulting_ his own brother, stabbing him in the side, almost killing him, and there’s no going back from _that_ , no, Loki is a suspect now, a wanted suspect, and wherever he went, they’ll hunt him down and they’ll arrest him and throw him in jail because that’s just how it works because there’s so little regard for mentally ill people in law enforcement.

“Here,” says Detective Coulson, handing her a glass of water. “I know how utterly disturbing—”

“You don’t know a _goddamn_ thing,” Frigga screeches as she slaps the glass of water out of his hands. It tumbles to the floor, breaking into pieces. “Loki is … He’s not … I need to call … You don’t even know … He’s …” A sob tears through her chest. “She left her number … Hela … She …” Frigga scrambles to her feet and wobbles into the kitchen. “She left it right here … I don’t understand …”

“It’s okay,” says Officer Romanoff.

“No,” screeches Frigga. “She left it _right_ _here_. It was here … It was … A-and Thor saw her car! He … he said her car was parked out front! You n-need to …” Yes, they need to ask him but they _can’t_ fucking ask him because Thor is fighting for his life because … because …

“I’ll handle it from here,” Coulson says to Romanoff. “You drive Mrs. Fjörgyndottir to the hospital. I’ll have a look around, if that’s okay? We leave a unit here in case your son returns to the house.”

Frigga nods weakly.

“Where’s his room?”

“Upstairs, first room on the right.”

Detective Coulson gives a nod and Frigga walks with the officer, who tells Coulson that he might want to switch off the oven in which the roast she so foolishly prepared in the naïve hope that they could just have a normal conversation like any other family on this planet is still cooking merrily.

* * *

Hela snaps awake when something jabs into her side. She blinks, trying to shake off the drug-induced nightmares taking her back to her years on the streets, and her vision is finally clear. She straightens in her seat, realizing with no small amount of terror that it’s fully dark outside already.

“Sleep well?” asks the kid.

 _Holy fucking shit_.

“Where are we?” Hela asks, perplexed that she managed to fall asleep with a sixteen-year-old kid driving her car. She was pretty damn stoked, yes, but _still_. She shouldn’t have … For all she knows, they’re on the run, for fuck’s sake!

“Just passed San Bernadino,” says the kid and somewhere along the way, he managed to clean up his hand. “I’ll need directions soon.”

“Just keep going on the I-10,” Hela mumbles, her throat drier than the Sahara desert. “How did we even get this far?”

The kid shrugs. “Luck’s on our side, I guess.”

“Will you tell me what happened?” asks Hela, a lump forming in her throat. “Back at the house?”

“Will you tell me what happened right before you rid yourself of me sixteen years ago?” the kid asks back. “You said it was an accident. What kind of accident?”

 _Damn him_.

But, then again, Hela does not want to be like those lying bitches who kept the truth from him because the kid’s got a right to know, doesn’t he?

“I went to work and I left you in the car,” Hela whispers and her past comes back to haunt her like an angry medieval mob chasing a witch with forks and torches. “Y-you were asleep. I don’t know for long I was gone. An hour? Maybe two? Hell, I really don’t know. I snorted some coke to take the edge off and when I returned, you were …You were cold. You didn’t cry anymore. I couldn’t tell if you were still breathing and then I got angry and I … I guess I really wasn’t thinking straight.”

“I stabbed Thor,” the kid simply says in return, his voice flat, his eyes still devoid of any fucking emotion whatsoever.

Hela’s stomach fills with ice. “Like, to death?”

The kid shrugs.

“Wh-why?”

“Because he deserved it.”

The statement is so brutal in both its simplicity and its honesty that it sends a chill trickling down Hela’s spine. “So, you’re basically an offender?”

“So are you,” the kid reminds her with a mirthless chuckle. “A multiple offender, from what I heard. Did you know, by the way, that there’s no statue of limitations for child abuse and endangerment cases in Nevada? You can still be prosecuted for what you did to me and Odin has cameras installed in every room of the house. They have both your confession and the impeccable demonstration of your non-existent maternal qualities on tape.”

 _That feisty little shit_.

Hela swallows because, suddenly, she’s pretty damn uncomfortable with this fifteen-year-old kid in his oversized, blood-drenched sweater who is almost the exact same age she was when she gave birth to him and all she can do is stare, stare at his dark eyes, his razor-sharp cheekbones, his sinister expression. “Pull over. I’m gonna drive the rest of the way.”

The kid takes his eyes off the road, eying her suspiciously.

“Pull over,” Hela says because she is finally sober enough to seriously freak at the thought of this seriously messed-up, homicidal child being in control of her car. “There’s gonna be tons of patrol cars once we enter the city and if we get caught, we’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

He hesitates at first but eventually, he complies and they drive the rest to her place with an almost oppressive silence hanging over them.

“Hello?” Hela calls out when they enter her studio apartment, her chest swelling because the lights are on, which means that her boyfriend is there and, _holy hell_ , she needs his strong arms and everything else he has to offer after everything she went through tonight.

“Cozy,” remarks the kid as he scrunches up his nose even though it’s not a bad place. It’s certainly smaller than the suburban palace he grew up in but it’s still not exactly small. It’s also reeking of dope and booze though and maybe that’s why he’s scrunching up his face like that.

“Hey,” says her boyfriend as he appears in the hallway, wearing jeans and a white tank top exposing his enormous biceps. “What did the doctors …” He interrupts himself, leering at the kid. “Oh, hello. Who’s this little cutie you brought home to me?”

“He’s not,” Hela stammers, suddenly regretting bringing the kid here with every fiber of her being but that’s the story of her life, isn’t it? She _never_ learned from past mistakes. She’s thirty-two years old and she fucked up again and again and again because she was high, unable to think anything through, unable to consider the far-reaching consequences of her actions. It’s why she’s here now. Why she got involved with that man who she kinda sorta loves—which, in her case, means that he fucks her in a way that isn’t triggering all the time, finances her habit and puts up with a lot of her shit—but who she still despises for the things he does to earn his money. The things she helps him with sometimes. “I didn’t … That’s Loki. He’s, uh, he’s … my son.”

His face falls. “You … you have a _child_?”

“It’s a long story,” Hela mumbles because she doesn’t want to talk about it. She wants to get high again and sleep for ten million years. “And I’m—”

“It’s not that long of a story actually,” interrupts the kid, a sharkish grin playing upon his lips. “She got knocked up on the streets when she was my age but she was too young and too high to care for an infant, so she dropped me at her ex-stepdad’s house. They ended up raising me and she tracked me down to ask me if I’d be willing to donate some tissue because I’m her only living blood relative. Which is, ultimately, why I’m here.”

“I see,” says her boyfriend.

The way he phrased it does sound fucking plausible, thinks Hela but it also alarms her because, _damn_ , he really is fucking smart and he’s so good with words that it scares her. How could this person have come from her womb?

 _We all know you can’t have inherited your intelligence from your birthmother_.

“I’ll probably be living with you for a few days,” says the kid. “Do you have a guestroom of sorts?”

“I have a couch in my studio,” Hela offers.

“How come you didn’t bring anything?” asks her boyfriend because he too doesn’t miss a goddamn thing, his gaze lingering on her duffel bag for a moment before he looks up again, locking eyes with the kid. “If you intended to stay.”

“My ‘parents’ didn’t want me to,” replies the kid, making quote marks in the air. “We kinda left in a hurry.”

“I see,” he says again but he doesn’t sound convinced at all and how could he when the kid’s sweater is still fucking drenched in blood and Hela’s heart sinks because she’s a stupid ass addict whore who’ll never get anything right for the rest of her sorry existence.

“How about a drink?” asks her boyfriend, flashing the kid a disgusting, wolfish smile. “I’m sure you’ll want to celebrate this rather unexpected reunion.”

“Hell, yes,” murmurs Hela because the prospect of inhaling a bottle of gin to help her pass out again sounds very, very promising and maybe it is for the best that the kid came here after all, considering how Odin and his abusive shithead of a son messed him up.

* * *

Meanwhile, Frigga is sitting by the hospital bed, holding Thor’s hand, absentmindedly stroking over the back of it with her thumb. Another hospital bed, another son lying helpless. They gave her a sedative after she finally broke down sobbing when she saw Thor surrounded by all these machines in the ICU, unable to make sense of what the doctors were telling her, her legs almost giving out. She refused at first because she knew it would make her feel like she is feeling right now, dull and somewhat detached from her emotions, but maybe that is for the best. Officer Romanoff is still there, at least she was there a while ago. Not that Frigga actually knows how much time passed between then and now. Time no longer matters. There’s been nothing but the faint beeping of Thor’s cardiac monitor and the hustle of the ICU around her for what might have been hours or even days.

By some miracle, Loki missed the most important organs. “As if he knew where to stab,” said the doctor, which is what she actually remembers.

 _He’s critical but stable_.

That too.

 _Odin is stable_.

But Loki … Loki is out there, Detective Coulson’s team searching for him and there’s nothing she can do to help them because they won’t let her and, even if they did, she no longer feels quite like herself. She is too weak to stand up—she tried several times—and her mind shuts down every time she tries to think about what happened, what Loki did, because she is so confused, so angry, so disappointed, so confused, yes, she’s mainly confused because Loki … Despite everything that happened, she never thought he would … What he did …

 _It wasn’t Loki who I hit_.

 _Someone else took over for him and tried to get us fucking killed_.

 _And then Nikias got mad at both of us because he doesn’t want us to spend time with Thor anymore and it’s Nikias’s fault that Thor never came anymore_.

But how could her son not be Loki anymore? That doesn’t make any sense. The child she spend the weekend with was still Loki, still her son, even if he was _different_.

She should call Loki’s therapist.

What was her name again? Dr. van … something.

Frigga keeps stroking the back of Thor’s hand, keeps losing focus, keeps drifting off.

It’s the sedative’s fault.

The sedative makes it really, really hard to think and Frigga closes her eyes, imagining the cops finding Loki, bringing him to the hospital, the doctors taking care of his wounds, his therapist explaining what happened to the cops.

After a while, it does feel so real that she sinks into sleep, fully convinced that both of her sons are safe and that everything will turn out fine after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It will eventually because, even though I have been called an evil gumball machine or queen of darkness and whump, there's ALWAYS hope and, despite all the angst I heap onto my favorite characters on a regular basis, there's always been a happy ending thus far. Go check out my other fics if you don't believe me.
> 
> I know I am still brutal though because, yes, this is the last chapter of this fic. If you want any updates after that, you’ll have to subscribe to me as an author or the ‘Another little piece of my mind’ series as a whole *sighs*
> 
> That said, I know you all thought that Loki would be admitted to a psychiatric hospital or some other facility after the incident and so did I, for a really, really long time. But this series is supposed to explore the events of the MCU in a real-life human setting and what happens after the first Thor is Avengers, right? For a long time, I didn’t know if I could tell this story in a way that makes sense to me but it does now. I never thought I would include Hela's POV when I first planned this but now that I did, there are POSSIBILITIES. Which is to say that the prologue (a.k.a. Loki's hospitalization a.k.a. Dark World) you read at the beginning of this fic won’t happen for a while.
> 
> The next will be an Interlude (which will be posted in a few days after I received a satisfying number of comments) and then we’re continuing with ‘Aftermath’, which I am currently working on (meaning I have written parts of the first chapter in my head and a basic outline for the rest).
> 
> Now, regarding this chapter: I researched the statue of limitations in Nevada but the sites weren’t exactly clear on all types of child abuse. With child sexual abuse, you can file charges until the victim turns 36 years old if the victim discovers that they were a victim of sexual abuse or trafficking by the date they turn 36. What Hela did wasn’t sexual abuse but I just decided to take some liberties because … Why the hell not? 
> 
> Oh, and you might have noticed by now that I’m doing my very best to tell the story in such a way that I won’t have to go into detail about medical procedures at all because, meh, researching that takes a lot of time that I don’t really have, so I'll try to stay clear of it *winks*
> 
> I hope to see you all soon. Thanks for all your feedback and your comments and your kudos. Your responses meant a lot to me during a really depressing, frustrating time and I hope you’ll stay for the ride. If not, I understand. If yes, I'll be thrilled!
> 
> xoxoxo

**Author's Note:**

> Please review. It's so much harder to keep going without a quick feedback :)


End file.
